Sebastian Vivas of Audemars Piguet Highlights the Brand's Legacy

p/p pstrongAs the heritage and museum director, what does your role demand?/strongbr /At Audemars Piguet, we have a long history, which started over 140 years ago. We are the inheritors of an industry. [So] itandrsquo;s important to know about this history to study it. Thatandrsquo;s the reason why we opened, in 1992, our first exhibition room with antique watches. Then, in 2004, we enlarged it to occupy the whole building of the first workshop of the company. Thatandrsquo;s the reason why we are going to expand it even further by 2018, hopefully, to transform it into a cutting-edge museum in Vallandeacute;e de Joux (Switzerland). The role of the heritage director in this context is to know the history to study it, to protect it, to enrich the collection, and to communicate it both internally and externally. It also enriches all the marketing tools that we develop, including publicationsandmdash;even web publicationsandmdash;conferences, lectures, and so on. As soon as we talk about history, the heritage department is involved, because we have to deliver the content.br /br /strongGiven your role, is there some information you can share about Audemars Piguet that few people are aware of?/strongbr /We had the opportunity, three years ago, to come across documents that had been lost for years. They were kept by Audemars Piguet, but near a railway station with tons of other material, so nobody knew it existed. It was a gold mine and we started studying that. We had the register for the fabrication of the movements, but not the final watch. Itandrsquo;s very important to have that because the model conceptandmdash;i.e. the concept of making two units of the same model and giving a reference numberandmdash;appeared only in 1951. This means that, before, the watches were all different from each other. The craftsmen would make a watch with a certain type of calibre and add a dial and case, but the watches were different from each other. They sold it without any reference number, whereas today, we have a reference number for every watch. So up until then, we didnandrsquo;t know how many watches might have used the same case, for instance. And this kind of information is extremely precious for the collectors and even for us. We found out that we made 208 wristwatches equipped with calendars between 1921 and 1978. We communicated this to our collectors, hosted a VIP dinner with Christieandrsquo;s and published this in a small brochure. Suddenly, the prices for this market exploded. It was something new, because we had never published this. We did something similar for minute repeater wristwatches. And we found from 1892 up to 1960 and even later, only 35 minute repeater wristwatches./p p style="text-align: center;"andnbsp;/p pem/em/p p style="text-align: center;"/p p style="text-align: center;"emSebastian Vivas, Heritage and Museum Director, Audemars Piguetandnbsp;andnbsp;andnbsp;andnbsp;andnbsp;andnbsp;andnbsp;andnbsp; /em/p pbr /strongYouandrsquo;ve been credited with opening the Royal Oak room and the Registers room as well./strongbr /When I started at Audemars Piguet, we had a museum since 2004. It was broken into and all the Royal Oak watches being exhibited were taken. And within two years, the room dedicated to Royal Oaks was closed. So one of the first things I did when I joined the company was to reconstruct that collection and reopen that room. This was done based on what we had and our efforts to enrich the collection. And we have now, more or less, 1,600 pieces in the collection. Then I wanted to do something special for visitors in the museum. Our museum is not open to the public and entry to it is by invitation. We want to have the very best quality of experience and we want to offer only guided visits with skilled people or historians. I wanted to go a little furtherandmdash;to open a room where I could show the archives, fabrication registers, and so on. And if someone came with their watch, wanting to know more, we could show the research and find his watch. So thatandrsquo;s an experience. This leads me to the next chapter; itandrsquo;s a very ambitious project and is scheduled to be ready in 2018. The museums will be in a completely different buildingandmdash;a brand new, futuristic design alongside a highly traditional, heritage architecture that we will restore in a way. So you will travel from the 19th century to the 21st century. The project is designed by Bjarke Ingels of the Bjarke Ingels Group, with offices in Denmark and New York./p pandnbsp;/p p style="text-align: left;"andnbsp;/p pstrongMore On andgt;andgt; a href="http://www.luxpresso.com/watches" target="_blank"Watches /a/strong/p

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