A patron of art, Audemars Piguet conveys unconventional aesthetics to "ticking" masterpieces that demonstrate how the long-established watchmaker has a daring way with diamonds.
The rebellious Diamond Fury. Audemars Piguet
Crafted with 56 pyramid facets, Diamond Punk released last year now has a rebellious rock star sister, Diamond Fury, whose sparkling scales slink stylishly around the wrist.
The haute joaillerie timepiece along with the latest aesthetically-pleasing Millenary models were presented earlier this year at SIHH 2016, held in Geneva.
The bejewelled novelties showcase the Swiss brand's disruptive ideas in watch design along with the savoir-faire acquired over its 140 years of history.
At Le Brassus in Switzerland's Vallée de Joux, designers, engineers, watchmakers and jewellers worked on the Diamond Fury with 206 brilliant-cut diamonds on the dial hidden in a secret panel; and 4,635 more sparklers on the white-gold case and bracelet.
The precious stones are combined with black onyx elements for a variation of the edgy watch powered by a quartz movement.
The same combination of gems gives the new white-gold Millenary its hypnotic zebra-like stripes upon the face of the elliptical watch, with an off-centre disc and small seconds counter.
The contemporary take on haute joaillerie extends to transporting seed pearls previously adorning watch cases to a graphic dial pattern on the diamond-set pink gold Millenary.
Rethinking the use of the traditional decorative technique, Audemars Piguet jewellers hand-picked the perfect 1mm pearls for their precise setting as magnetic studs against the dial's gleaming black onyx.
The modern designs merge with the performance of in-house movements for the Millenary collection, which caters to women with a penchant for pricey mechanical watches.
Dan Holdsworth takes photographs of rocks, mountains and glaciers as he turns geological reality into otherworldly wonder. The British photographer, whose father was a physicist and mother an artist, has found a formula to put science into art, or vice versa, depending on which angle you look at it, as his works condense hard physics into sublime abstraction.
Commissioned by Audemars Piguet, Holdsworth's "Continuous Topography" series is a set of digital photographs that have been rendered through a sophisticated mapping technology. Rocks become white clouds, and mountains become eerie, negative skeletons. All of them were taken at Vallee du Joux, the home of the watch brand, and his concept seems to revolve around topographical deconstruction to reveal the secret of time.
"It's interesting to look at the particularities of geology and the formidable environment of the valley," he said at Art Basel. "The Vallee du Joux is part of the Jura Mountains, which inspired the name 'Jurassic' as defined by the geographer Alexander Von Himboldt in the 19th century. I spent several weeks there surveying the rock formation and developing software models for the work."
It's an unusual process. Holdsworth uses both traditional cameras and complex mapping software and geological measurements in his works, interpreting time and ages through layers of rocks and translating them into pictures. Mixing science and art has been his passion. In the late 1990s, he travelled to the European Space Agency site in French Guiana land later to the space observatory in Peurto Rico to take photos.
"The history of mapping and photography dated back to the mid-1850 when the US government sent artists to work with scientists in the American West," Holdsworth said. "Science-art collaboration isn't new at all."
Millenary models present aesthetically-pleasing graphic dial patterns. Audemas Piguet
