The Jumping Hours Complication Returns To Audemars Piguet With The Neo Frame Jumping Hour

The recent launch of the Neo Frame Jumping Hours from Audemars Piguet has generated a lot of excitement, and not a small amount of controversy. I should say at the outset that regardless of anyone’s personal reaction, this is pretty big news as watch world news goes – the Neo Frame Jumping Hour is the first jumping hour watch in many years from AP, although the digital display of time as a broad category was previously represented by the Code 11.59 version of AP’s Starwheel complication, and the jumping hour complication, as recently as the mid-2000s, in the Jules Audemars Jumping Hours Minute Repeater. This is also the first example of a rectangular watch collection from Audemars Piguet since the retirement of the late lamented Edward Piguet line, also in the mid-2000s (to get a sense of the flavor of the EP collection, see our take in A Watch A Week on an Edward Piguet Perpetual Calendar). The new Neo Frame Jumping Hour watch is not only a new model, it’s also the first watch in the concurrently announced Neo Frame collection of rectangular watches, and AP says that we’ll be seeing more introductions in the new collection in the near future.

The first reaction I had to the press kit images, was unreserved pleasure; I was a very big fan of both the complication, as AP has interpreted it over the years, as well as of AP’s history with rectangular cased watches, which it has used for both simple time-only watches, as well as complications all the way up to tourbillons and minute repeaters. Likewise, I have always found the jumping hours complication, with its connection to the Art Deco era, irresistible (mostly; in recent months there have been a few that look more as if the marketing department were checking off a box than doing something that felt right for the company’s identity. Not every brand should be in the jumping hours business and especially for a company with a tool watch or sports watch heritage it can look as if someone’s tried to put a bow tie on a bulldozer).

Some folks have complained that in the current climate, when everyone and his brother seems to think they need a jumping hours watch in the catalog (for good or ill) this feels like a me-too watch as well and all I can say is, if there’s any argument to be made that a brand’s history entitles it to do something, it’s hard to think of a brand more entitled to swim in the jumping hour waters than Audemars Piguet. The brand’s first jumping hours watch was also one of the first wristwatches with a jumping hours complication, and it preceded the launch by Cartier of the better known Tank à Guichets in 1929, by eight years, with the first Audemars Piguet jumping hours watch launching according to AP’s archives in 1921 (date, per Phillips). This watch may in turn have been preceded by a round jumping hours watch which was the subject of a patent by Albert Dbuois and Alfred Spori which has a publication date of 1916 – but Audemars was in the world of jumping hours watches early, and often and according to the company’s archives, between 1924 and 1951 it produced 347 watches with this complication; a niche but highly interesting group of watches which might attract the collection of any AP enthusiast.

The question of historical legitimacy can be disposed of, therefore, and the worst you can say about AP is that if it’s not mentioned in the same breath as Cartier when the subject of jumping hours watches come up, it’s due to its multi-year absence from the field and not due to any historical vacuum. This leaves the other elements of the watch open for discussion.

The Neo Frame is 34.6mm x 34mm, and for comparison, the Large model Tank Louis Cartier is  25.5mm x 33.7mm, and a Reverso Classic Monoface is 45.6 x 27.4 mm. Both the Tank and the Reverso are therefore, more rectangular than the Neo Frame; however, the Neo Frame’s black PVD treated sapphire crystal is framed by two very prominent pink gold gadroons, so the watch while it’s essentially square rather than rectangular, certainly gives a very strong impression that it’s a rectangular watch.

It’s also 8.8mm thick, or almost 3mm  thicker than the recently introduced Cartier Privée Collection Tanks à Guichet; those watches, however, are powered by the hand-wound 9755 MC, which is an extra flat, 2.1mm thick Piaget 430P with a jumping hours system. The Neo Frame Jumping Hours, however, is automatic, running the caliber 7122, which is a 4mm thick, 29.6mm movement based on the 3.2mm thick AP 7121, introduced for the company’s 50th anniversary, in the ref. 16202 Jumbo. Some of the additional thickness of the Neo Frame Jumping Hours, relative to the à Guichets, may be due to the sapphire crystal, which appears to be relatively thick, perhaps at least partly in order to give the gold-framed apertures better depth.

The gadroons are substantial and their thickness combined with the grooves along the flanks, gives them an almost columnar air. Viewed on edge, the thickness of the crystal and the depth of the windows is really obvious and it gives the Neo Frame an architectural feel which makes it quite distinct from other, more squarely Art Decon jumping hours watches. The gadroons curve sharply downwards to allow the strap to wrap more closely around the wrist.

The caseback, which gives the same feeling of substantial heft that you get from the watch as a whole, is secured by four gold screws, and has a squared off oval window for viewing the movement. This is an interesting strategy as it gives you the appearance, at least at first glance, of a shaped movement; of course, the 7122 is round, and vertical edges of the display window cut off the edges of the movement as well as of the rotor. Objections have been heard here and there, now that the watch has been out for a couple of weeks, regarding the use of a round movement in a square watch. I don’t think that detail matters all that much taken on its own, although there would have been something satisfying about seeing a square, hand-wound movement in the Neo Frame, to emphasize the geometry of the design, and historically jumping hours watches were often built around round movements anyway. The difference here is that unlike the Tank à Guichets, the movement is visible and I wonder how many objections had been raised if its shape were an abstraction rather than concretely visible.

When we think of jumping hours watches, at least from a classicist’s perspective, the image a lot of us have in mind and the expectations we’re conditioned to have, are for many of us heavily biased by the idea that such watches are ideally thin, rectangular, and relatively discreet; and of course one of the companies which has conditioned us to have this preference is AP, at least in its historical production. This however, is a jumping hours watch which reflects some of AP’s evolution over the last 20 years, into a company for whom strong visual identity and even overt expression of luxury and status, are intrinsic to its success. AP still does remarkable things with complications, of course; just look at the ultra complicated Heritage 150 Pocket Watch.

But I see this as an indisputably visually powerful, almost monumental re-imagining of what the jumping hours complication has been at AP in the past – the jumping hours complication as it is filtered through the lens of the factors that have made the Royal Oak one of the most commercially successful watches of all time. It can be a challenge to honor the past if the past isn’t a mirror of the philosophy of the present, and certainly, AP could have done something like bring back this 2002 tribute to the John Shaeffer jump hour minute repeater. As long as you don’t expect too much of the Neo Frame in terms of it being a window into the past, you’re opening up to seeing what it says about AP’s future.

The Audemars Piguet Neo-Frame Jumping Hour, ref. 15245OR.OO.D206VE.01, from the new Neo Frame Collection: case, 34.6mm x 34mm x 8.8mm, pink gold with PVD treated black sapphire crystal on the front, and rear sapphire crystal display back; gold-tone (presumably PVD treated) media blasted apertures. Water resistance, 20M. Movement, AP caliber 7122, caliber 7121 base; automatic, 29.6mm x 4mm, jumping hours and dragging minutes on two disks, running in 43 jewels at 28,800 vph; 52 hour power reserve. Price at launch, $71,200; find out more at AudemarsPiguet.com. 

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