AUDEMARS PIGUET / A secret revealed, the Établisseurs Peacock

Key Highlights

• The Établisseurs Peacock is a secret watch built on a fully engraved white-gold case that opens at a gentle press to reveal a hand-sculpted peacock interior.
• The movement is a specially adapted Calibre 3098 featuring a trailing-hour display.
• Translucent engraved enamel and vividly set gemstone eyes distinguish the peacock’s interior composition.
• Feather-inspired bracelet links extend the naturalistic design language from case to wrist.
• The creation is the product of the Atelier des Établisseurs, uniting a designer, an engraver and beveler, an enameller, and a jeweller working in close dialogue.

The Atelier des Établisseurs and the Art of Secret Watches

Within AUDEMARS PIGUET’s broader creative universe, the Atelier des Établisseurs occupies a singular position: a workshop in which specialists from distinct disciplines converge on a single object, each contributing a layer of meaning that the others could not supply alone. The Établisseurs Peacock is the latest expression of this philosophy, and it is among the most ambitious the atelier has produced. It belongs to a centuries-old tradition of secret watches — timepieces whose true identity is concealed beneath an outer shell that must be opened, pressed, or slid aside to reveal the dial within.

The exterior of the Peacock presents as a fully engraved white-gold case designed to evoke a beetle’s carapace: hard-edged, iridescent in suggestion, and quietly alive with surface texture. At a gentle press, that shell opens — the mechanical metamorphosis that gives the piece its defining drama. What appears to be a sculptural jewellery object transforms into a functioning wristwatch, and the transition is engineered to feel seamless. For collectors in the Gulf who prize objects that reward close attention, this duality between outer restraint and inner revelation is particularly resonant.

The tradition of secret watches has long been a marker of the highest ambition in VAN CLEEF & ARPELS-style haute joaillerie, but AUDEMARS PIGUET brings to the format something distinctive: a mechanical heart of genuine horological complexity, rather than a simple quartz module concealed within a gem-set case. The Calibre 3098, specially adapted for this creation, ensures the Peacock earns its status as a watch first and a jewellery object second — or, more precisely, as both simultaneously.

The Calibre 3098 and the Trailing-Hour Display

At the technical core of the Établisseurs Peacock sits a specially adapted Calibre 3098, configured to power a trailing-hour display. This indication presents the time in a way that prioritises visual flow over conventional legibility — an appropriate choice for a piece whose entire identity is built around poetic transformation rather than utilitarian purpose. The adaptation of the movement to suit the geometry and aesthetic demands of the secret-watch format is itself a feat of watchmaking engineering, requiring the calibre to function reliably within the spatial constraints imposed by the opening case mechanism.

The trailing-hour display aligns naturally with the organic, motion-oriented language of the peacock motif: time appears not as fixed numerals but as something that glides, trails, and shifts — mirroring the sweep of a peacock’s tail in display. For watch enthusiasts attending Watches and Wonders and following the season’s most technically refined releases, this calibre adaptation represents one of the more considered marriages of complication and concept in recent memory.

Four Crafts, One Creation: The Artisans Behind the Peacock

The Établisseurs Peacock is, above all, a document of collaborative craft. Designer Kenan Geraud conceived the overarching vision, studying structures as unexpected as shark skin under a microscope to understand how geometry can carry both function and beauty. The surface detail of the white-gold case owes its depth and precision to engraver and beveler Guy Froidevaux, whose work produces texture that cannot, in his own words, be reproduced — each pass of the tool guided by instinct as much as technique.

Enameller Vanessa Lecci brought the interior to chromatic life, approaching each colour as a distinct personality. The translucent engraved enamel that frames the hand-sculpted peacock within the opened case is technically demanding: translucency requires the enamel layer to be thin enough to reveal the engraving beneath while retaining a depth of tone that reads as vivid rather than washed out. Jeweller Ywan Kuntzle completed the quartet, setting the gemstone eyes with the precision that animates the peacock’s gaze and executing the feather-inspired bracelet links that extend the bird’s plumage logic onto the wrist itself.

Feather Links and Gemstone Eyes

The bracelet deserves specific attention as more than a structural element. Its individual links are shaped to echo the branching geometry of a peacock feather, creating a visual continuity between the case and the wrist that reinforces the piece’s identity as a unified object rather than a dial mounted on a strap. The gemstone eyes — set to capture and redirect light in the manner of an ocellus marking on a real peacock feather — are among the most intricate individual operations in the entire creation, requiring Kuntzle to balance gem selection, orientation, and setting depth against the surrounding enamel and engraving.

Why It Matters

The Établisseurs Peacock demonstrates that AUDEMARS PIGUET’s creative ambitions extend well beyond the Royal Oak’s architectural vocabulary, into a space where watchmaking, engraving, enamel art, and jewellery-making become genuinely equal contributors to a single object. For GCC collectors who appreciate both the technical rigour of haute horlogerie and the visual language of fine jewellery, this piece represents precisely the kind of crossover creation that justifies serious attention. Full details are available on the AUDEMARS PIGUET official site.

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