A Story of Expertise

The Tapisserie technique lies at the crossroads of three traditional skills: engraving, guilloché work and pantography. The oldest is engraving, an art born thousands of years ago and used by every civilisation, alongside sculpture and painting. An artisan patiently carves or sculpts the material using tools such as scorpers, burins, chisels and burnishers to depict myths, hunting scenes, characters, flowers, coats of arms and arabesques. Literally anything can be represented by the engraver. In watchmaking, this art appeared as early as the 16^th century and was used to decorate table watches, pendants and more. It continues to this day, notably at Audemars Piguet on openworked movements, personalised oscillating weights and dials.

The second Tapisserie-related skill is the centuries-old guilloché technique. Suffice it to mention the copying lathe of Tsar Peter I in 1718, as well as the guilloché lathe (also known as a rose engine) made by François Houard for Max Emmanuel of Bavaria in 1712. With these machines, artisans engraved regular straight, curved or wavy lines that were juxtaposed, intertwined or criss-crossed to cover a metal surface with abstract geometrical patterns creating fascinating light effects. From the 18^th century onwards, first in France and then Switzerland, the guilloché technique began to be mechanised and notably applied to pocket watch cases. The motifs were "programmed" into cams that rotated in such a way as to create small shifts of position, combining to result in a guilloché pattern. Abraham-Louis Breguet helped popularise this art in the watchmaking field, adorning his creations with hobnail Clous de Paris, barleycorn or basketweave motifs.

The third technique is pantography. The Illustrated Professional Dictionary of Horology describes the pantograph as "an instrument for copying drawings mechanically, sometimes also enlarging or reducing them" by means of articulated arms and using a pattern (also called a matrix or model). The Musée International d'Horlogerie in La Chaux-de-Fonds has some superb examples of dials with pantograph script so small as to be barely visible to the naked eye. The pantograph was also used by Vacheron Constantin from the 1840s onwards to produce tiny components so precise that they no longer needed manual touching up and were thus designed to be interchangeable.

The Tapisserie pattern therefore combines these three techniques. Like engraving, it hollows out the material with a burin. Like guilloché work, it uses a mechanised lathe. And like pantography, it reproduces the design of a pattern (matrix or model) by modifying its size.

The article dedicated to the 5402 dial variants goes into detail about the characteristics of the T21 Tapisserie, developed for the first Royal Oak dials and currently known as the Petite Tapisserie. The reader will find information on the truncated pyramids, their variations, the more than 50,000 tiny diamond shapes, the Bleu Nuit, Nuage 50 (Night Blue, Cloud 50) colour, the AP monogram at 6 o'clock and the AUDEMARS PIGUET signature at 12 o'clock, the white gold tritium hands and hour-markers, and more.

For almost 30 years, the Petite Tapisserie motif has been found on dozens of types of dial: from the 20 mm mini-Royal Oak to the 44 mm Royal Oak Grande Complication, including the first quartz models, perpetual calendars and gemset versions. Whether attired in shades of blue, slate, black, green, salmon pink or even red, it remains true to itself – meaning always a little different because it is hand-crafted. This pattern is one of the fundamental aesthetic codes of the Royal Oak. However, unlike the eight screws or the octagonal bezel, it is not exclusive. From the end of the 1970s, when the Royal Oak became a collection, many models featured dials without Tapisserie that were sandblasted, brushed or hammered, made of natural stone, mother-of-pearl, sapphire and even entirely paved with diamonds. This diversity enriched the collection and opened up new horizons. As the year 2000 approached, Jacqueline Dimier and the AP design team decided to give the traditional Tapisserie pattern a makeover.

The Royal Oak Offshore collection was long considered the wild child of Haute Horlogerie. Oversized, excessive and outrageous, it made waves at the time of its birth in 1993. Nonetheless, from 2001 onwards, it perpetuated the tradition of the Petite Tapisserie pattern, which could be found on most of the collection (25721, 25770, 25807, 25854 and 79290). During the following years, while gradually adopting the Grande Tapisserie motif, the Offshore continued to keep the Petite version alive. Some variants of the original Model 25721 were indeed equipped with it at least until 2007.

Although loyal to its origins, the Royal Oak Offshore loves freedom. A designer's playground and an ardent fan of innovative materials and bright colours, it introduced, in 2001, a Tapisserie motif even larger than the Grande version on Model 25940SK (with its rubber bezel). While the catalogues initially referred to it as Extra-grande Tapisserie, it became famous under the name Méga Tapisserie adopted in 2005. Meanwhile, it gradually made its way into the Offshore collection, with Model 67450 in 2002, followed by Models 26007, 25986 and 25863 in 2003, then 26020 from 2004, etc...

Emblems of extreme sport and sturdiness, the truncated pyramids were larger than ever. They were also non-conformist in two respects: their size and their production technique. Although their shape was derived from the traditional Tapisserie pattern, they are obtained by stamping, using extremely powerful presses. In 2021, an additional, more complex Méga Tapisserie motif saw the light of day with the launch of a new Royal Oak Offshore model (26420) in a 43 mm size: on the dial of Model 26420, the squares were now linked by "mini arms" and the stamping pattern incorporated a vertical snailed motif.

It should also be noted that after renouncing it for five years, the Royal Oak Offshore revived the Petite Tapisserie in 2013 (with a 20-piece anniversary 26218 limited edition) and reinstated it within the current collection upon the timepiece’s 25^th anniversary, with Model 26237ST.

In 2004, Audemars Piguet’s Board of Directors hired Bruno Moutarlier to accelerate the vertical integration of production. Trained as a robot engineer, the determined and charismatic Frenchman began his watchmaking career at Cartier. He was involved in the ascent of the Le Brassus-based brand which expanded between 2000 and 2010 from 350 employees to more than 1,100 and from 16,000 to 28,000 watches produced per year.

Upon his arrival, Bruno Moutarlier noticed that Stern Créations was no longer able to meet the growing demand from Audemars Piguet. Deliveries were often late, quality tended to be irregular, returns were increasing, yet the Geneva dial maker had a monopoly on this expertise. Not only did no one else know how to guilloché-work Tapisserie patterns, but the engraving machines were no longer manufactured. Lienhard was absorbed by its competitor Güdel in 1960 and the latter ceased production at the end of the 1970s. As a last resort, Bruno Moutarlier set out in search of second-hand machines. All those in Europe were acquired by the dial makers of the large groups. He found three in the United States that had been used by medal engravers. He purchased them and brought them back to Switzerland, entrusting Jean-Jacques Rochat – a micromechanical genius who founded a small company in the village of Aubonne in 1973 – with the task of understanding the tools and restoring them to their original condition. By a happy coincidence, Jean-Jacques Rochat had just received identical machines for repair... from Stern Créations, from which he was able to derive some precious information.

There are times when the stars align perfectly. In 2006, Canadian watchmaker Marc Ferland, who had been working in Audemars Piguet's After-Sales Service department for six years, began training as a guilloché artisan. At the time, this skill was under serious threat, as there were only a handful of such craftsmen left in Switzerland, including 76-year-old Pierre Rosenberg from La Chaux-de-Fonds. For five years, the venerable artisan passed on his knowledge to the young watchmaker in fortnightly sessions, a rhythm interrupted only by a few stays in hospital.