This Piaget Protocole Shows Why Vintage Piaget Is Having A Moment

One of my fondest memories of Piaget is from close to thirty years ago, when I had only recently moved to New York and decided on the spur of the moment to walk into the midtown Piaget boutique. I had only recently begun taking a serious interest in watches but I knew already that Piaget was famous for elegant, ultra-thin watches, up to and including tourbillons. It was August, and I’d hiked from my apartment on the Lower East Side up to Central Park, and I walked into the boutique looking like a wet dog, but the staff was as welcoming as if I’d been a film star, and I have always felt ever since that if I ever got the scratch together I would want a dress watch from Piaget. And the watches, which I had never seen in person before, were beautiful – thin, elegant, and redolent of charming and effortless sophistication.

Which is why I’m very happy to see that Piaget is beginning to have a bit of a moment, after many years of sitting in the shadow of some of the better known fine watchmaking brands at the Richemont Group. Piaget has done some interesting and even wonderful things over the last twenty years, including the ultra-thin Altiplano Ultimate Automatic, but its much longer history as one of fine watchmaking’s great design brands, as well as its place in the longer history of ultra-thin watchmaking, have until fairly recently been understood and appreciated by only a relatively small number of collectors.

This is all by way of saying that I think Piaget’s long, rich history makes it ripe for re-discovery (or just plain discovery, I suppose) by the larger collector community. (For anyone wanting to get to know the brand a bit better, there is an excellent historical overview at A Collected Man, as well as a fantastic look at the company’s design history and resurgent presence, from Tony Traina over at HODINKEE). The company, which is today still based in La-Côte-au-Fées, up in the Swiss Jura on the border with France, north of Geneva, was one of the greatest design innovators in fine watchmaking after the end of World War II, but its mastery of elegant and innovative design has often been matched by the deployment of horologically interesting and important movements. These include the ultra-thin calibers 9P and 12P, which were launched in 1957 and 1960 respectively, and which were the engines behind Piaget’s dominance in the world of ultra-thin watchmaking in the years leading up to the Quartz Crisis.

A Watch A Week is, this time around, looking at an absolutely stunning example of Piaget’s expertise in both ultra-thin watchmaking, and craftsmanship in case and braceletmaking as well. The watch in question is a Piaget Protocole, on a gold bracelet. The Protocole watches were first introduced in 1963, and they have in common a rectangular case, with cut corners, and vertical engine turning on the case and dial. At launch, the Protocole watches were powered by the hand-wound 2mm thin caliber 9P, and over the decades since, the collection was expanded to include XL, round, and “Miss Protocole” ladies’ watches. The Protocole has been offered in every livery imaginable, from models with simple straps, to lavish full-set diamond models, and even models (XXL, in this case) with very detailed and elaborate enamel miniature painting on both the dial and the case.

This particular Protocole uses a later version of the 9P, the 9P2, which is very slighty thicker than the 9P (by only 0.15mm). Power reserve is 36 hours and thanks to the 2.15mm thin caliber, the watch overall is quite thin as well. Measurements are 28mm x 25mm x 4.05mm, which, it ought to be emphasized, puts it in competition with the discontinued Vacheron Constantin Historiques 1955, which when it launched in 2010 was the thinnest in-production mechanical watch in the world.

The beauty of the case and dial, however, are almost overshadowed by the incredibly intricate integrated bracelet.

I think this is probably as close to making fabric out of metal as you can possibly get. The bracelet is made of extremely small interwoven, irregularly shaped links in a diagonal pattern, and overlaid with very fine vertical black stripes which are, design-wise, continuations of the engine turning on the case. I consider myself reasonably well acquainted with various watchmaking terms of art and a decent number of associated terms relating to bracelets, horological gem-setting, and the general working of precious metals into forms which are visually and tactilely pleasing but I’m not sure what this specific sort of bracelet is called – it seems too fine for “beads of rice” (which is always a term that’s baffled me a little as rice comes in grains, not beads, but who am I to argue with established practice?)

What I can say is that it’s one of the most beautiful examples of finely done, functionally irreproachable, fantastically intricate goldsmithing I’ve ever seen. These sorts of very fine link bracelets are, I can only assume, time-consuming as all get-out to make, and I can’t remember the last time I saw one on a newly released watch, but as an example of how to seamlessly merge a case with a bracelet, and all the while integrating both to the use of a very high-class, world-famous ultra-thin movement, this pretty little Protocole is very hard to beat.

Although ultra-thin watches are often rather light in the hand and on the wrist, this Protocole still has a pleasant, reassuring heft, thanks to the gold case and bracelet.

This is something that might be categorized in some quarters as a ladies’ watch but I don’t think there is any reason, at 28mm x 25mm, to think it wouldn’t suit a gent (or anyone) who found the design attractive. For reference, Cartier’s most recent Privée Collection version of the Tank Normale is 32.6mm x 25.7mm and the original, from the 1920s, was even smaller at 27mm x 19mm. Admittedly the pendulum in terms of tastes swings back and forth, but at this point in the watch world as we know it, in the year 2024, there’s no reason for size taken as a single criterion, to gender a watch.

One other thing worth mentioning – the price. In general, vintage Piaget watches, even in precious metals, and even with world-class, historically important movements, are going for a song; if you are looking for a way into collecting fascinatingly varied designs from a brand with real history, at prices more reminiscent of 2004 than 2024, right now vintage Piaget is the game to beat. In a world where a vintage Cartier Pebble is a quarter of a million dollar watch, finding pieces like this, which are going for somewhere in the mid-to-upper four figures (four – not five, not six, four) is the kind of value proposition we can all get behind.

See It Here