The iconic Limelight Gala ladies’ watch from Piaget unveils a stunningly luminous diamond and sapphire gradient motif.
Prestigious watchmaker Piaget’s pedigree in handcrafting jewellery watches is undisputed – it made its first foray into designing luxury materials in the 1960s, and has since firmly established itself in a class of its own in goldsmithing expertise and technical savoir-faire.
Founded in La Côte-aux-Fées in 1874 by Georges-Édouard Piaget, the Maison became renowned in the world of watchmaking for its ultra-thin movements that would later become its trademark and the cornerstone of the iconic Altiplano collection. However, it wasn’t until Yves G. Piaget, a fourth-generation Piaget, joined the company in the swinging ‘60s and transitioned the house from watchmaking into high jewellery, that he introduced daring combinations of colourful dials crafted from semi-precious and precious stones, and the sex appeal of slinky bracelets and mesh-knit chains.
Piaget Patrimony pieces, gold bracelets and hard stones dial.
This won Piaget die-hard fans across the glamorous Hollywood jetset, including Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren and Jackie Kennedy, and brought Piaget’s creations on to the red carpet and firmly into the cultural zeitgeist.
Piaget Limelight Gala
With the ostentatious ’70s in full swing, Piaget debuted an extravagant new ladies’ model featuring dazzling diamond-studded asymmetrical curves around an oval dial, and a sumptuously hand-engraved slim gold bracelet – the iconic Piaget Limelight Gala.
This icon of lavish femininity has since been reinvented multiple times over the years, but always retaining its distinctive sensual curves. Some notable design iterations over the decades include a gold bracelet version with a refined Milanese mesh in 2013, and a bold reinvention showcasing a dark green striped malachite dial in 2019.
Gala Inspiration – Piaget Patrimony 1964, Limelight Gala watch 2019 and Limelight Gala Precious 2020
This year, Piaget’s luminous new version of the Limelight Gala celebrates Piaget’s three pillars of excellence – the art of gold, light and colour – featuring a hand-engraved white gold bracelet and dial highlighted by swirls of large diamonds and sapphires set in a subtle gradient of different shades of blue.
Piaget Limelight Gala Precious Sapphire Gradient with 18K white gold bracelet.
Like a sunbeam illuminating an elegantly curving wave at its translucent apex, the diamonds have been expertly set using the Serti Descendu technique – a new open-worked style of gem-setting to feature larger stones, allowing maximum light through to give the illusion of being invisibly held together, rather than set in gold.
On the left: Piaget Limelight Gala Precious Aventurine Glass. On the right: Piaget Limelight Gala Precious Rose Gold.
Palace Décor Savoir-faire
One of the design specialities of the Maison is the painstaking handcrafting of gold bracelets that lends its creations a remarkable tactility and organic elegance, using an in-house method it calls the Palace Décor style.
Mainly inspired by nature, Piaget has crafted hundreds of pattern varieties based on shapes and textures like tree bark, reptilian scales, foliage, frost, water and waves, etc. Not unlike the craftsmanship of an haute-couture dressmaker, this technique takes years of practice to perfect and requires the artisan to assemble and join hundreds of miniature gold links, resulting in a bracelet of remarkable suppleness.
On the left: Hand engraving of the "palace" decoration on the Gala watch; On the right: Snow like hand engraving
Over the decades, Piaget has committed itself to elevating the art of designing fine jewellery with the technical precision of watchmaking, giving the world exceptional timepieces like the Limelight Gala, which continues to represent modern femininity through the decades.
With this brilliant new Precious iteration of the Limelight Gala lighting the way, we are looking forward to yet more high notes from Piaget to be revealed this year.
Images courtesy of Piaget, artwork by Curatedition. All rights reserved.
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