05/16/2018

Hands-On: The Girard-Perregaux Laureato Skeleton Ceramic

A movement generously open-worked, a contemporary skeleton treatment, and covered by a technical ceramic attire.... This Laureato has what it takes to out seduce its high mechanical counterparts. Let's go hands-on!

By Vincent Daveau

Contributor

On the side of quality watchmaking houses, the concept of skeletonization in recent years was to do everything possible to script the mechanics. This trait has offered fans of quality timepieces the ability to discover a large number of watches revealing their charms in one way or another.

Far from trivializing the skeleton in watchmaking, this fashion has ended up making us forget that this specific treatment imposes additional cutting work that requires brands to have skilled craftsmen in the field. Even if part of the process is now carried out by especially sophisticated and expensive machines. In short, this work of lightening a caliber represents a cost in expertise, time and money that should not be forgotten or minimized.

An ancient practice regenerated

At Girard-Perregaux, the art of skeletonization should not be overlooked. inherited from ancient times, particularly, from the 19th century, this mechanical treatment must also live with its time and thus escape a certain traditionalism. Some houses have made similar choices but decided on a very modern orientation of the graphics of the cutting, this Chaux-de-Fonds manufacture has retained designs that preserve curves dear to the profession to reveal the modernity of the lines of an ultra-contemporary timepiece like the Laureato Skeleton Ceramic.

Visually close to a spider's web, the Laureato’s skeleton work reveals the components of an automatic mechanical movement whose structure, practically in line, retains a position of the balance at 12 o'clock. In this polished and satin-finished metal lace, angled and treated in black PVD, the rhodium-plated gears of the GP 01800-0006 caliber can be more easily identified. But this treatment also makes it possible to focus attention on the Beryllium bronze balance wheel, which has retained its natural color, and on the rotor, which is also largely open worked and made of 18-carat solid gold.

Undoubtedly, this intense black color allows the structure of the watch’s heart to truly merge with the black ceramic case, making it a pure success. It visually creates a true symbiosis and an intense link between plate, bridges and case, giving birth to a timekeeping instrument whose unique character is underlined by its captivating coherence.

Games of light, in transparencies

Size at 42 mm, this watch icon, designed in 1975 and now available in ultra-contemporary black ceramic, has the ability to converge and play with light to reveal the complex texture of its structure. In a sense, this piece with its architectural geometry, highlighted by the presence of this famous octagonal bezel, stands out in the watchmaking galaxy as a gravitational singularity capturing everything that passes in its environment to retransmit in emotional waves. The warm and intense black of the ceramic, a practically unalterable and biocompatible material, contributes enormously to reinforcing the charisma of this charmingly bewitching watch.

In the end, this reference to absolute simplicity, where the small second hand at 10 o'clock does not interfere with the reading of essential time information, it reveals the captivating power of duality. Because the Laureato Skeleton Ceramic plays with light and contrasts it with black to better reveal the care taken in the work of opening and highlighting each component of this movement. It confronts the modernity of the lines on this piece completed by a powerful black ceramic bracelet, with the tradition of design, brought to light by a skillful skeletonization. The latter highlights the richness of a craft where the plurality of treatments always reinforces the emotional strength of products that have been the subject of special care.