Audemars Piguet has been celebrating the 50th anniversary of its famed Royal Oak this year, with a number of new releases that spotlight the iconic octagonal design. However, the new black ceramic case and bracelet of the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Selfwinding Carolina Bucci Limited Edition is one of the brand’s most interesting releases of the year, as a study in opulent subtlety.
Designed in collaboration with Italian jewellery designer Carolina Bucci, Audemars Piguet has shown the unending versatility of the Royal Oak design with this latest timepiece, elevating its design with several ultra-modern manufacturing techniques. This isn’t the first time Audemars Piguet has collaborated with Carolina Bucci, with the previous link-up seeing the creation of the granular Frosted Gold finish that today adorns the cases and bracelets of a number of different Royal Oak references.
However, this latest collaboration piece takes things in an entirely different direction from precious metal case finishings and instead selects Audemars Piguet’s much-celebrated ceramic manufacturing expertise, to create this blacked-out 34mm timepiece. Yes, it’s on the smaller side and was designed with more modestly proportioned wrists in mind, but if you ever get the chance to try on a 34mm Royal Oak, I highly recommend it because they wear much more comfortably than you might imagine.
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While the case is monochromatic black ceramic with a precise blend of brushed and polished finishes, AP has delivered a number of rose gold highlights in the hands and hour markers, bezel screws and even the crown insert. Standing just 9mm tall on the wrist, its case guarantees 50m of water resistance and features an exhibition caseback that shows off the wonderfully finished movement inside.
The real star of this Audemars Piguet and Carolina Bucci collaboration is the dial, which has been laser engraved with a rainbow chequerboard pattern that nods to the classic tapisserie guilloche of the original Royal Oaks. The rainbow effect is achieved thanks to the two-piece sapphire crystal and brass dial layers, where a sapphire crystal disc has been engraved and then covered with a thin film of gold, resulting in an explosion of refracted colour against the black brass second layer.
“I wanted to place a rainbow in the most unexpected of places, a little like when you see oil floating on a puddle in a city street,” explained Carolina Bucci. “So here you have every colour of the spectrum on a canvas that is completely black, which is itself the absence of colour.”
It’s certainly an innovative dial making technique, which still makes appropriate reference to the half-century-old history of the Royal Oak, despite its cutting edge process. The dial construction also means that it looks different colours depending on the light, from pitch black to a sparkling array of various bright hues. Beneath the enchanting dial is the cal. 5800 movement, ticking away at 28,800 beats per hour and serving up a respectable 50 hours of power reserve.
It’s certainly one of the coolest new designs we’ve seen from AP in recent years, and as you might expect, will be tricky to get your hands on one. Limited to 300 pieces worldwide, it arrives with an RRP of CHF48,500 (AU$69,901).
