A former GPHG jury member forecasts the top prizes of horology’s biggest night.
The annual Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève, often referred to as the Oscar’s of the watchmaking world, is nearly upon us. Some of the biggest names in watchmaking will compete on November 9th in Geneva to take home several top prizes honoring everything from mechanical innovation to métiers d’art wonders.from 2012 to 2019, an event that is often called the watchmaking world’s Oscars, I have a pretty good handle on how discussions in the jury room can go.
As the first split-seconds chronograph in the complicated and bombastic Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Concept line and the first rattrapante in an automatic AP at all—a rather infrequent complication in AP’s arsenal altogether—I can easily imagine the jury leaning toward this fan favorite. Among the astounding array of tourbillons here, I believe the Bovet Virtuoso XI might be the standout due to its sheer elegance and obvious celebration of the complicated escapement style. However, I also think it could get elevated to win the night’s top prize, Aiguille d’Or, leaving the door open for the glorious HYT Conical Tourbillon Infinity Sapphires, a brainchild of genius watchmaker Eric Coudray that is a highly animated behemoth of a timepiece with no hands and a ton of visual impact.
The Louis Vuitton Tambour Opera Automata is a serious piece of artistic horology, but so is the Audemars Piguet Code 11.59 Ultra-Complication Universelle RD4, a unique timepiece in an edition of one featuring 40 functions—just one of which is the brand’s much-lauded Supersonnerie—selling for CHF 1.7 million. I think its sheer audacity and relatively svelte size for all it contains will see it slip past the melodic LV to take this category’s statuette home.
As the Highlander would have said, “there can only be one.” Of course, he was talking about human heads rather than “golden hands”…Lil Uzi Vert Just Rocked an Eye-Catching Richard Mille Timepiece on Stage
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