Joint Forces

A pioneer in quartz timekeeping back in the 1960s, Piaget has emerged as this year’s firebrand watchmaker willing to accord electronic technology its place in the world of mechanical watchmaking. Karishma Tulsidas discovers how and why, with the new Emperador Coussin XL 700P

ounded 150 years ago…” “The 10th anniversary of a collection…” “75 years since a groundbreaking innovation…” The reasons to celebrate a milestone are countless, and that’s exactly what Piaget is doing this year with the launch of its new Emperador Coussin XL 700P timepiece. In the eyes of purists, however, the celebration is a contentious one, commemorating not a milestone in mechanical watchmaking but the brand’s 40-year legacy of creating quartz movements. The impact of quartz on the Swiss watchmaking industry has been transformative, for good and for bad. In the time following the quartz revolution of the 1970s, many watchmakers were shuttered as the market was flooded with cheap and highly accurate watches. In fact, even though both the Swiss and the Japanese were developing their own quartz movements simultaneously, it was the Asians that succeeded in arriving on the market first, a blow to the Europeans. Still, Swiss brands like Piaget and Girard-perregaux were at the forefront of quartz innovation. Girard-perregaux would set the industry standard of quartz with the calibre 350 that operated with the frequency of 32,768Hz, boasting an accuracy of 0.164sec a day—a frequency that is now used by all quartz watches. Piaget further pushed the boundaries of design and continued on its quest for the thinnest movements, albeit in the quartz watch category, and developed the ultra-slim Piaget 7P calibre in 1976. As time went by, mechanical watches made a return, signalling status and wealth