Altiplano Double Jeu Gold Lacework

Piaget Art and Excellence – Sublime Radiance

On the occasion of the 2017 SIHH, the Piaget Art and Excellence collection brings to the forefront two artistic crafts that are as rare as they are exclusive. The new highly original Gold Lacework models reveal the poetry and extreme precision of a brand new craft that this artist-artisan can rightly claim to have invented and an art in which she is indeed the sole proponent! A glowing tribute is also paid to Feather Marquetry in which absolute elegance meets unbridled extravagance and gives rise to exceptional works of art.

Piaget unveils both these exceptional and luxurious crafts with three new timepieces – the Altiplano Feather Marquetry; the Gold Lacework Altiplano Double Jeu and the High Jewellery Cuff Watch. These beautiful novelties pay tribute to the new creative heights reached by the Maison Piaget.

Piaget has dedicated the past five years to its jewellery icon, the Rose, creating beautiful variations highlighted through beautiful artistic craftsmanship. For 2017, Piaget continues in this tradition by showcasing its outstanding expertise in an extraordinary collection transcending the realm of creative liberty.

Calling upon a sense of boldness and surpassing personal limits, together with shared pleasure and stylistic freedom, Piaget is entering a new territory this year: Radiance, an essential part of the Maison’s DNA.

The Swiss Manufacture is cultivating its differences and exclusive nature to provide not only a masterful demonstration of its mission to perpetuate forgotten crafts, but also its ability to distinguish itself in unusual and extraordinary fields. This involves a continuous search from the Maison to seek out the finest artisans in their respective fields, in order to create exceptional models which continue to push the limits of innovation.

Sara Bran, sole exponent of her art

Gold becomes lace beneath her nimble fingers. Finalist in the Prix Bettencourt (2010), honoured by the Grand Prix de la Création-MNRA (2011) and laureate of the Talent de la Rareté competition at the 2015 Sommet du Luxe et de la Création, Sara Bran dreams up, sketches and then crafts authentic jewellery that are glowing tributes to finesse and refinement. Sara has built a unique creative universe and an exclusive style. Better still, she has invented a profession which she is the only artisan to exercise: lace maker on gold. Before specialising in this lacework created from thin plates of precious metal measuring just a few millimetres thick, Sara – a self-taught artisan unbound by the confines of academic practice – was involved in carving stone and marble to create monumental sculptures. Her passion for lacework became woven into her experience in Portugal, where she conducted research among art masters with a special focus on the popular and aristocratic lacework housed in the Decorative Arts Museum of the Foundation Ricardo do Espirito Santo Silva. “To give a new lease on life to textile works and to ensure that their decorative repertoires would endure, I became a lacemaker on gold”, as Sara Bran explains in defining this brand-new artistic craft. From stone to gold, the similarity lies in removing material in order to produce exceptional models freely inspired by the world’s finest needlework lace. Sara Bran’s goldsmithing treasures are, in themselves, an artistic language that reveals the very essence of lacework. Undeniably both artist and artisan, she instils her creations with an inspirational vision of a multicultural world, in which both styles meet and mingle, breaking free of chronological constraints to develop a singular identity that becomes her unmistakable signature.

Altiplano Double Jeu Gold Lacework

To recreate the lightness of lacework on a slim plate of pink gold, Sara Bran uses pointed scribing tools and a compass to trace the motifs, drills bits to pierce holes, as well as saw blades to cut out the metal using a highly specific skill – that of manual redrilling with a small hacksaw. Proceeding by opening up empty spaces, she gradually eliminates material to reveal – after countless hours at the workbench – a delicately
sculpted lacework as fine as a super-thin thread. Piaget, which has become a specialist in fashioning gold, was destined to cross paths with this expert lacemaker. Witness the Altiplano Double Jeu and the exceptional High Jewellery Cuff Watch now featuring this exquisite craft.

A model emblematic of the Piaget style and expertise, the Altiplano Double Jeu with its two superimposed cases ideally lends itself to the lacemaker’s work. The diamond-set upper module is attired in the precious and dainty gold lacework with a radiating motif enhanced by marquise-cut diamonds. The hours tick steadily beneath this magnificently transparent decor and a press on the dedicated pusher is enough to open the cover and reveal the minimalist white dial of the Altiplano, with its heart beating to the tune of the hand-wound 430P movement.