A minute repeater is usually judged with the eyes closed. Audemars Piguet built its newest one to be watched first. The Code 11.59 Minute Repeater Supersonnerie, announced this week in an 18-carat white gold case, wears a smoked sapphire dial that leaves the chiming mechanism half visible underneath, gongs and governor in shadow behind the glass. Slide the repeater and the watch strikes the hours, quarters and minutes aloud; here, you can see the machinery that does it.
The reference, 26395BC, runs 41 millimetres across and 13.6 thick, on a grey alligator strap. Inside is the hand-wound Calibre 2953: 362 components, 72 hours of power reserve. The Code 11.59 line launched in 2019 and has spent years arguing that it belongs beside the Royal Oak. A minute repeater is the strongest form of that argument, because it answers in the oldest language watchmaking has: sound.
Eight years of acoustics behind one chime
The Supersonnerie system took eight years to develop, with watchmakers working alongside musicians and researchers from EPFL, the Swiss federal technology institute. It debuted in the Royal Oak Concept RD#1 in 2016. The gongs are mounted not on the movement plate but on a dedicated soundboard, and the caseback is built as a resonance chamber, so the chime projects outward instead of dying inside a sealed gold case. Most repeaters whisper. This one was engineered, at laboratory length, to be heard across a room.
Stone, cut thin enough to read time through
Two 38 millimetre Code 11.59 Selfwinding models arrived with it, and their dials are geology. The first, in 18-carat yellow gold, carries a dial of gold obsidian, volcanic glass whose mineral inclusions catch light under a sunburst finish, set off by a dark brown inner bezel. The second, in 18-carat pink gold, uses black onyx polished to a mirror, its hour markers replaced by baguette-cut diamonds totalling about 0.37 carats. No two stone dials are alike, because no two pieces of obsidian are.
Both run the self-winding Calibre 5909, 174 components with a 60-hour reserve, in cases 9.6 millimetres thick with double-curved sapphire crystals. Audemars Piguet published no prices with the announcement, which for the repeater means what it usually means in Le Brassus: ask, and be prepared for the answer to have six figures. The stone dial pair will be the attainable end of this release, in the way a gold watch on an alligator strap is ever attainable.
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