Vicenzaoro Highlights, January 2024: Bewitching Complications
Today’s special guest at the VO Vintage talks (12 noon in the VOV Lounge) is Giulio Papi, one of the great masters of haute horlogerie, who will be illustrating Audemars Piguet's ultra-complication L'Universelle
How did the idea for this ultra- complication come about and how long did it take to make?
The idea was to create a great ergonomic complication, in other words, a watch that was easy to read and adjust without a user manual, but also robust enough to withstand sport. The dimensions of the watch were important and the maximum we set ourselves was a diameter of 42 mm and a thickness of 15.5 mm. It took seven years of work, but the result is an accumulation of the experience gained in 35 years of designing complicated watches.
What are the main features that make it unique in the industry?
The Universelle includes a tourbillon with an innovative escapement; a 72- hour power reserve; a semi-Gregorian perpetual calendar with a large date; an astronomical moon phase with a true-tolife image; a chronograph with minute and hour counters, flyback and split-seconds; a grand sonnerie with a “loud, soft and silent” function; a minute repeater with a resonance case; automatic winding of the movement and chime; and forward- backward date and month correction. All this in a watch that is extremely compact, reliable and, above all, easy to read and adjust.
What aspect of your job excites and fascinates you the most?
Being able to imagine a mechanism, design it, make the components and assemble them, and then realize that it is metal parts that turn or flex and produce the imagined result. Why should a young person today consider practicing this profession? Because it is not just one profession but several put together. It is a combination of art, craftsmanship, science, chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, marketing and a peaceful passion that has no boundaries.
