Jewellery and watchmaking: an inseparable pairing

“Do not be deceived by appearances” came the warning from the Roman satirist Juvenal 2,000 years ago, subsequently complemented by Shakespeare’s statement: “All that glitters is not gold”. Even today, writers and philosophers often contrast substance with form.

Let’s apply this duality to watchmaking. The substance lies in the mechanism: the cogs and springs driving the beating heart of the watch, associated with science, progress and performance measurement. Form relates to the exterior: the case, dial and bracelet, associated with social status, culture and even the “vanity fair”, to borrow the title of a famous American magazine.

Through its origins and history, Audemars Piguet is first and foremost a master of mechanisms. The brand was born in a unique region, the Vallée de Joux: a historical centre of établissage, home to artisans specialising in complicated movements since the 18^th century. For a very long time, the Vallée de Joux entrusted the design and productions of watch cases to artisans based in Geneva or other cities.

All this led Ilaria Resta, upon taking the helm of Audemars Piguet in January 2024, to be begin by discovering the many facets of watchmaking expertise: accurate touches, keen eyes, traditional and high-tech tools, technical innovations, meticulous finishes… In a word, the very heart of the Manufacture. What really surprised her was when she realised the immense creativity the brand had displayed since 1875 in the realm of jewellery: ring-watches, pendants, brooches, cases set with gemstones, enamelled, engraved or even guilloché… Contrary to what writers may say, form is not deceptive, instead revealing the talent of passionate artisans and expressing an unexpectedly rich history.

The new CEO opted to launch several projects designed to turn the spotlight on these rare and sometimes endangered skills. Unveiled in spring 2026, the Atelier des Établisseurs aims to create new watches by prioritising traditional crafts. Six months later, Audemars Piguet has taken a further step by launching a jewellery collection devoid of watch mechanisms.

Although surprising, this launch is part of a longstanding yet little-known history: that of the dialogue between watchmakers and jewellers. This article retraces its origins and for the first time tells the story of Audemars Piguet’s jewellery, where form and function form an inseparable whole.

It is often said that Swiss watchmaking originated in Geneva, spurred on by the Reformer Jean Calvin in the 16^th century. Having taken refuge in the city on the western end of Lake Geneva – later nicknamed “Protestant Rome” or “Calvin’s city” – the man dubbed the “Pope of the Reformed Church” is said to have banned the wearing of jewellery, which was deemed contrary to the morals of the Reformation. The city’s many jewellers hence turned to watchmaking, as Calvin tolerated watches that ensured punctuality and discipline. In short, Swiss watchmakers are said to be former jewellers who changed careers.

While this story is told in books, on the internet, in films, Calvin’s edict is never mentioned. Why not? Because it does not exist, as confirmed by Swiss historian and theologian Max Engammare. On the one hand, Calvin, as a pastor, never held any political power. Having settled in Geneva in 1541, he issued rules for the clergy, notably promoting punctuality at worship services. According to some sources, he also imposed fines on latecomers. On the other hand, the restriction on the wearing of jewellery was not Calvin’s doing but instead stemmed from “sumptuary ordinances” published as early as 1558, which limited the wearing of gold and silver chains and were similar to other laws enacted at that time in many European cities.

While this myth has thus been debunked, to say the least, there is no smoke without fire. Historian Estelle Fallet, chief curator of Geneva’s Musée d’art et d’histoire, readily acknowledges that while Calvin did not ban jewellery in Geneva, she nevertheless describes him as the “godfather” of watchmaking: “Calvin’s influence on society lays in the realm of moral discipline”, which contributed to the rise of watchmaking in Geneva, notably culminating in the establishment of the watchmakers’ guild in 1601.  It would however, be wrong to think that watchmakers had replaced jewellers in Geneva. Until the 1650s, there were more jewellers than watchmakers. Faced with edicts restricting their activities, some turned their hand to watch cases. It was therefore the collaboration between watchmakers and jewellers that fostered the rise of the Geneva watch industry. The collections of Geneva’s Musée d’art et d’histoire or the Patek Philippe Museum offer compelling insight into this shared history. The watches are often embellished with enamel, niello, gemstones or engravings, transforming them into true works of jewellery. For in Geneva, more than in any other Swiss watchmaking city, jewellery and watchmaking have always gone hand in hand.

At first glance, watchmaking and jewellery seem bound together for eternity. Numerous publications dedicated to watchmaking have included a jewellery section in their pages, such as Watchmaker, Jeweller & Silversmith from 1875 onwards, as well as Schmuck und Uhren Zeitung as of 1947. The Basel Fair – the world’s largest watch show in the 20^th century, – granted an increasingly prominent place to jewellery in the course of its history. One should also mention the EPHJ and BIJORCA trade fairs, as well as the Inhorgenta show in Munich, which still combine the two arts to this day. As for watchmaking schools, most introduced jewellery courses from the 20^th century onwards.

Despite this apparent unity, the partnership between watchmakers and jewellers was seriously undermined by industrialisation. From the late 19^th century onwards, in response to industrial growth and modernisation, watches had to be produced in tens, or even hundreds of thousands. Jewellery skills therefore no longer had a place within production on that scale, having been replaced by machinery – and what initially applied to inexpensive watches spread to sports models and more broadly to electronic timepieces.

The “divorce” was nonetheless never finalised as one small segment kept the union alive: that of Haute Horlogerie. Any high-end watch is in fact both a technical object and a piece of jewellery – whether or not it is set with diamonds. This is because the finishing of all its components, from movement to case, is performed with the same meticulous care and requires expertise drawn from the world of jewellery. And when artistic crafts such as gemsetting and jewellery-making play a predominant role, the watch is referred to as a “jewellery watch”.

Gérald Genta, one of the pioneers of watch design, was a trained goldsmith and jeweller. This page features a reproduction of his apprenticeship certificate from the Manufacture de Bijouterie, Joaillerie et Chaînes Ponti Gennari, located in Geneva: a city whose jewellery-making tradition, as we have seen, dates back to the Middle Ages.

As an independent designer, Gérald Genta designed thousands of watches between 1950 and the 2000s for the entire watchmaking industry. He sold dozens of designs to Audemars Piguet until the early 1970s. Below are a few examples of jewellery watches attributed to him – he almost never signed his gouache sketches – of which some were produced for watchmaking and jewellery competitions.

Gérald Genta’s most famous creations were nonetheless not designed as jewellery. Examples include the Universal Pole Router (1954), the Omega Constellation (1959) and the Patek Philippe Nautilus (1976). His most iconic design for Audemars Piguet is the Royal Oak 5402 (1972), ccrafted from steel and water-resistant to 100 metres. While it does not at first glance appear to be a piece of jewellery either, closer inspection reveals that it bears traces of the world of jewellery. Witness its integrated, tapering metal bracelet with finely faceted links; its rounded, octagonal bezel with generous chamfers; as well as its complex monobloc case: all its components are finished to make light “sing” on the metal, as its designer put it.

Ever since Genta’s time, jewellers have often been part of the Audemars Piguet design team, starting with Jean Fred Meylan, the first in-house designer, who joined the company in 1972 but left Audemars Piguet in 1976 to teach jewellery-making at the Geneva School of Decorative Arts. At various times, his students have included Emmanuel Gueit who we shall meet again in Chapter 9 and Régis Vaillant who features in Chapter 11.

In 1987, youthful designer Emmanuel Gueit joined Jacqueline Dimier. He recalls: “We had no set brief; at most, we had intuitions, sometimes informed by market trends or our colleagues’ ideas. We tried out all kinds of things. We’d sketch several gouache drawings a day. Watches, of course, but also jewellery, handbags, belts and right the way through to leather briefcases – I’ve kept mine… I even designed an Haute Joaillerie chess set!”

“Once a week, we’d present the designs to Steven Urquhart, who was in charge of distribution. He would work with us to decide what would be produced, either as prototypes or in small batches, always with the target market or markets in mind. Marcus Margulies, then responsible for the UK market, was particularly fond of Haute Joaillerie creations, which he resold in the Middle East through Asprey London. All that remained was to work with in-house and external workshops on the production side of things.”

Whether jewellery or accessories, most of the designs were linked to watch collections, such as the Bamboo (from 1984), the Baroque (from 1986) and the Audemarine (from 1990).

Nevertheless, in 1992, Audemars Piguet embarked on a venture to create jewellery unrelated to watchmaking. To this end, the brand acquired a Geneva-based jewellery workshop, Maxence Van Der Bauwede. While commercial success was limited, a significant number of jewellery pieces progressed beyond the design stage and broadened the brand’s creative horizons.

Published by the AP Technical Department, the “Accessories Bibles” list all the non-watch items that have been produced. Far from being anecdotal, this production spans over 40 years and comprises more than 500 designs!

While the archives do not reveal the quantities produced, nor even which of these items were gifted to the best customers or sold, these creations deserve collectors’ attention. Just like watch cases, some accessories are rarer than the watches they complement. Others are miniature jewellery masterpieces. All reveal the freedom of an era in which creative imagination was guided by a “the sky’s the limit” ethos.

In 1985, Régis Vaillant, a 24-year-old jeweller, gemmologist and gemsetter, joined the Audemars Piguet gemsetting workshop – which at the time employed just one artisan. He soon merged his workshop with the jewellery atelier, giving it a significant boost: by 2007, the atelier would employ up to 20 people.

The artisans gave life to the designs conceived by Dimier and Gueit, mastering a wide range of skills, from casting to gemsetting, including bar-turning, shaping, filing, wire-drawing, rolling, polishing, engraving and more.

We cannot resist the pleasure of showcasing some of the creations from that era here. Among them is the 1986 Baroque watch: the first collection to feature in-house-crafted cases and featuring gemstone dials. Another example is the Haute Joaillerie watches that were particularly popular among clients from Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan during the 1980s and onwards. Among the most colourful watches, one should also mention a multicoloured cuff watch with three dials powered by three movements; a mermaid-shaped wristwatch/pendant; an egg entirely set with gemstones housing a watch; as well as a series of over 30 small children’s jewellery watches commissioned by a sultan and shaped like lions, locomotives, toy cars and even teddy bears…

The 1980s and 1990s saw jewellery gain prominence at Audemars Piguet, paving the way for its official inclusion in the brand’s 1998 General Catalogue.

In the late 1990s, Régis Vaillant (chap. 11) asked Georges-Henri Meylan, then co-CEO of Audemars Piguet since 1987, to grant him a budget of one million Swiss francs to purchase batches of exceptional gemstones with which to create unique watches.

Before we continue, let’s take a brief linguistic aside. The English word “jewellery” can be translated into French in two ways. Derived from joyaux, the term joaillerie dates back to the Middle Ages (chap. 2). Bijouterie began to flourish from the 19^th century onwards. The profession of joaillier partially replaced that of orfèvre (goldsmith). For Régis Vaillant, who ran the Audemars Piguet jewellery workshop for 20 years, the difference is a matter of priorities: “Bijouterie is the art of adorning metal components with precious stones. Joaillerie strives to make the metal disappear so that the stones take centre stage.”

In this sense, it was indeed joaillerie that the workshop manager wished to create. Jacqueline Dimier, who was working freelance at the time, was commissioned to design the watches. This gave rise to a series of one-of-a-kind creations initially intended to mark the brand’s 125^th anniversary in 2000 and which continued to be produced until 2010. Some bear particularly evocative names: “Symphonie pour une émeraude” (2003), “Grâce Printanière”(2003), (2004), “Au nom de la délicatesse”; ”Diamantissimo”  (2005), ”Carnet de Bal” (date), “Givrine” (2006), “Coup de Théâtre” (2008)...

At the same time, Audemars Piguet’s jewellery range was enriched by exclusive collections, such as “Oak Leaves” (2005), an Haute Couture variation of the Royal Oak; and “Danaé 1919” (2005). In 200X, the atelier succeeded in creating the first entirely diamond-set Royal Oak Offshore (Model 15130BC) introducing concave-cut diamonds, before applying this innovative method to the Millenary Diamants Baguette in 2007. To ensure the diamonds followed the shape of the case, a dedicated system known as the “AP Cut” was patented.

Although exceptional, these creations ran counter to the brand’s overall strategic direction. At Audemars Piguet, the 2000s were dominated by the Royal Oak Offshore, leaving little room for unique Haute Joaillerie models.

Stacking involves wearing several bracelets side by side on the same wrist, often in different colours. This is not done with watches because their bracelets and cases risk scratching one another if they come into contact. However, when Ilaria Resta discovered the first prototypes of the Royal Oak Mini, Audemars Piguet’s new CEO couldn’t resist the temptation to slip all three gold versions onto her wrist. A colleague remarked: “You’re wearing them like jewellery!”

Jewellery. The idea was back. The AP Meyrin workshops went ahead and created three Royal Oak Mini bracelets – without watches – featuring the hammered Frosted finish in yellow, white and sand gold versions. Ilaria Resta wore them at a major event in Milan. They caused a sensation among both women and men and the unanimous verdict was: “We have to make them!”

Rather than confining itself to bracelets, Audemars Piguet organised a co-creation initiative called “Éclat” (radiance) in November 2024. Over three days, 12 women with a passion for jewellery, accompanied by gemmologists, gathered in Hong Kong to share their favourites and their desires. The project was enriched by the intertwining stories of each participant.

The jewellery project began gaining traction and, above all, taking on greater meaning. Its objectives? To renew the long-standing dialogue between Audemars Piguet and the world of jewellery; to broaden creative horizons; to learn and to explore – and above all to provide a platform for traditional jewellery skills, both in-house and external: jewellers, gemsetters, engravers, chain-makers, gemcutters…

The project remains firmly rooted in watchmaking. As such,   Audemars Piguet jewellery is designed to complement the watches, lending an extra touch of brilliance. It draws on the same aesthetic codes. In short, jewellery is conceived as bringing added value to the brand’s most discerning clients and enthusiasts with the aim of enhancing their watch collections.

On 2 October 2026, following their presentation to a select group of clients at events in Bangkok, Zurich and Saint-Tropez, the first 19 creations were unveiled to the public in Paris. Their design blends the world of the Royal Oak with influences from the natural Vallée de Joux landscape.