Audemars Piguet created only two ultra-complicated pocket watches in its entire history, and one of them has remained out of sight for decades. Now, at the 150-year mark of the manufacture’s legacy, this monumental piece returns to view with a movement so vast, so intricate, and so ambitious that even AP’s modern watchmakers still approach it with reverence. Featuring the night sky over London mapped with 315 stars, true sidereal time, a grand strike mechanism, and a perpetual calendar, the watch reaches a level of astronomical complexity rarely attempted in the 19th century.
Opening the case is an emotional moment for the descendants of the original watchmakers—craftsmen whose expertise shaped both this movement and its counterpart, the Universal. The architecture, the acoustics, and the technical audacity of the Gross P speak to a chapter of watchmaking where innovation had no limits and time itself was treated as a mystery to decode. The closer one looks, the more the piece challenges everything we assume about what a watch can be.
These will be part of Sotheby’s Luxury Week, presented by EDITION Hotels.
