Audemars Piguet Jules Audemars Decimal Minute Repeater Tourbillon watch

The Audemars Piguet Jules Audemars Decimal Minute Repeater Tourbillon watch is a classically beautiful timepiece that presents two extraordinary high complications. With this timepiece, the engineers and watchmakers at Audemars Piguet present a technically fascinating twist upon the minute repeater--one of the most celebrated complications in the realm of haute horlogerie. Since its founding in 1875, the house of Audemars Piguet has specialized in the most elite watchmaking specialities, including perpetual calendars, striking watches, and those timepieces which combine multiple complications.

Traditional minute repeaters, of which Audemars Piguet has produced many extraordinary examples, feature an immensely complex mechanism of snails, racks, and springs which are able to translate the position of the hands on the dial, into a precise symphony of chimes. Typical minute repeater watches sound out the hours, then the quarter hours, and finally, individual minutes. However, the Audemars Piguet Jules Audemars Decimal Minute Repeater offers something different; with this timepiece, the quarter hour (15 minute) interval is replaced by a chime that indicates 10-minute intervals instead. (Thus, for example, at 7:45, one will hear 7 low notes, 4 high-low combination tones, and 5 individual high notes).

The manually-wound 2882 Caliber movement which animates the extraordinary Jules Audemars Decimal Minute repeater watch was developed by Audemars Piguet and their famed integral complications specialist, Renaud and Papi. In addition to its unique striking complication, this timepiece also incorporates a tourbillon, which is displayed proudly through the aperture in the dial; bearing the balance wheel and the escapement across a polished steel bridge, the tourbillon cage completes a single revolution each minute. To ensure that the beauty of this mechanism matches its fabulous mechanical function, Audemars Piguet has refined each movement to the highest degree of haute de gamme standards; settings for jewels and screws are all individually counter-sunk and polished, bridges are lavished with hand-applied Cotes de Geneve patterns, and all steel components are drawn with a file and patiently chamfered according to the technique known as "anglage". The hammers of the repeater, which have been a given a lustrous specular polish, precisely strike the gongs each time the slide-lever on the side of the case is activated, the chimes perfectly tuned and clear thanks to meticulous adjustment, as well as the acoustic design of the interior of the case.

The Audemars Piguet Jules Audemars Decimal Minute Repeater Tourbillon watch is produced in 18K pink gold. In addition to this classical material, Audemars Piguet is also presenting the watch in titanium, a material chosen by Audemars Piguet for its outstanding acoustic properties; indeed, of all the materials from which the case of a striking watch may be made, titanium offers the greatest volume of sound. Each variant of the remarkable Audemars Piguet Decimal Minute Repeater Tourbillon watch will be limited to a series of only 10 pieces in each metal; the timepiece features a strikingly beautiful dial which displays a radiating guilloche pattern, and leaf hands wrought from polished gold. A fine, fully remborded crocodile strap completes these timepieces, joining to the wrist with an elegant clasp shaped in the form of the Audemars Piguet initials.