Audemars Piguet Royal Oak - 1987 (certificate)

“A tribute to steel ”: Royal Oak, the sporting icon

Description

The name Royal Oak rings in everyone's ears. Audemars Piguet has managed to create a model where elegance dialogues with sportiness. A watch with extremely accomplished finishes and which has been able to call upon various cutting-edge skills. This 30 mm model of diameter, in excellent condition, from 1987.

The case is characterized by its octagonal shape and its many facets with clean lines on which the light plays. These different reflections add a certain precious dimension and finesse to the model. In addition to the presence of steel, the sporty aspect is accentuated by the presence of eight visible screws that secure the octagonal bezel.

These elements are present both on the case and on the bracelet, so characteristic and structural. An integrated and flexible bracelet that creates a visual harmony for the entire piece. Each link is assembled with precision.

The dial, in a deep grey, is no less typical: the T21 (Tapisserie 21) motif, proposed by the Stern Frères workshops, with geometric lines recalling the case. Once again, the Royal Oak offers stylistic coherence for all the parts that compose it.

Why did Françoise choose it? 

How could Françoise have missed this watch that is so famous and important in the world of watchmaking? The Royal Oak is a must-have, both for its design and its history. A watch that caused a revolution. A unisex watch. A versatile and practical watch. The perfect everyday watch with its quartz movement, very pleasant on the wrist thanks to its articulated bracelet and its thin case. Sporty, certainly, but also refined by its play of light and its more contained size.

In addition to its excellent condition, this Royal Oak comes with its certificate of origin and warranty dating from 1987.

History

The watchmaking House was founded by Jules-Louis Audemars and Edward-Auguste Piguet in 1875 .

The birth of the Royal Oak took place in the context of the quartz crisis in the early 1970s. Thus, to face these increasingly precise watches, Audemars Piguet joined forces with the Swiss Society for the Watch Industry in 1969. The House asked the famous designer Gerald Genta, who had worked in jewelry, to imagine a sports watch. His inspiration was apparently the marine world and in particular scuba divers. The integrated bracelet was entrusted to the company Gay Frères and the dial to the dial maker Stern Frères.

The watch was first presented in white gold at the Basel fair in 1971-72. It was the first watch from the Maison to have a name. It is said to refer to the Royal oak that allowed Charles II of England to protect himself during the Battle of Worcester in 1651 or to the British Army warships that bore the name "Royal Oak".

Three patents were then filed in 1973: for an octagonal steel watch, for the articulated bracelet integrated into the case and for the octagonal bezel fixed by visible screws.

It was Jacqueline Dimier, who joined Audemars Piguet in 1975 following Gerald Genta, who gave the House its feminine impetus: quartz-powered women's models in smaller sizes.

The Royal Oak continues to evolve while remaining faithful to its original design, sometimes in yellow gold, gold and steel, steel, sometimes with a quartz movement or with complications.