fter unveiling their partnership last November and giving the name back to this iconic watch, Piaget and the Foundation Andy Warhol unveil a limited edition of 50 pieces, inspired by the “Collage” artwork of the artist.

Through more than 150 years, Piaget has introduced numerous watch and jewellery collections inspired by the creative arts. As a result, its designs have consistently attracted a discerning clientele from the art world, marrying the delicate and often intangible beauty of the artistic crafts with the brilliance of precision watchmaking. One such client was the visual artist Andy Warhol, a leading light of the hugely influential Pop Art movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Warhol, an avid collector of both trivial and exquisite objects, purchased seven Piaget watches in his lifetime, none more recognizable than the iconic cushion-shaped piece he acquired in 1973, previously named the 15102 watch.

In 2024, Piaget entered into a relationship with the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and formally named the contemporary expression of his watch the Andy Warhol Watch. Today, the Maison and the US-based foundation intensify their relationship with a capsule watch that transmits Andy Warhol’s singular creativity into the future – and onto the wrist.

As with many things, Andy Warhol was compulsively buying watches. By the time of his death in 1987, he had amassed a collection of more than 300 watches, including seven by Piaget. These were auctioned by Sotheby’s in New York a year later, and of those, four were purchased by Piaget and returned to its private collection in Switzerland. Among them was a black and gold example of the iconic reference 15102, a 45mm watch imagined by Piaget’s creative director Jean-Claude Gueit and produced in limited series between 1972 and 1977. That design, later known as the Black Tie, was reimagined for Piaget’s 140th anniversary in 2014. Parallels were drawn between the watch and Andy Warhol at the time, but it was only in the autumn of 2024 that the association was officially recognized when the Swiss Maison and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts entered into partnership for the first time.

Now, a year on, a watch that captures and interprets Warhol’s work. The Andy Warhol Watch ‘Collage’ Limited Edition features a dial decorated with a marqueterie of colourful ornamental gemstones arranged into an abstract form that echoes one of Warhol’s most celebrated polaroid collage self-portraits, taken in 1986. The watch’s stepped 45mm case is cast in 18-carat yellow gold, a metal chosen in homage to Warhol’s 1973 own watch, and that is otherwise unavailable in the contemporary Andy Warhol Watch collection. Only 50 examples will be made.

Andy Warhol is quoted as saying that ‘Art is what you can get away with’, a reference to the media theorist Marshall McLuhan. Yet when Piaget came to collaborating with the Andy Warhol Foundation, no such chances were taken. Instead, the Maison’s artistic director Stéphanie Sivrière and her team immersed themselves in Andy Warhol’s work and in the collaboration, travelling to New York to view archives opened up by the foundation, visiting exhibitions and devouring countless books dedicated to the pop artist’s vast catalogue.

The two parties agreed that in this first year of the partnership, the focus should fall on colour, a feature of Warhol’s portfolio, which often drew down on the bright, eye-catching tropes of commercial artwork developed for marketing and advertising purposes. “We spent six months researching Andy Warhol before we settled on a direction,” says Stéphanie Sivrière. “With such a wealth of material to draw on, it was extremely difficult to know where to begin. Should we look to one of his most famous works and iterate on a banana, a can of soup, or perhaps Marilyn Monroe? We quickly learned that we wanted to express Warhol, but without being obvious. To suggest, rather than to show. For their part, the foundation encouraged us to approach the project with freedom and to interpret Warhol in Piaget’s expressive, unbounded style. The result is a watch that tells the story of our collaboration but that stands on its own as a piece of watchmaking art, a collectible inspired by one of history’s most prolific collectors.”

The dial motif of the Andy Warhol Watch ‘Collage’ Limited Edition comes from the careful application of four ornemental stones, shaped, cut and arranged using the ancient Métier d’Art of marquetry. The base is in black onyx, same colour as per Andy Warhol’s own watch of 1973.

Complementing this are thin slices of ornamental stones: yellow Namibian serpentine, pink opal and green chrysoprase. These are surrounded by a stepped 45mm case crafted from 18-carat yellow gold and set on a green leather strap, a rich, mature colour chosen to add to the palette without distracting from the dial. The Andy Warhol Watch ‘Collage’ Limited Edition’s 18-carat yellow gold case back has a vertical satin-finish. Inside the watch, Piaget has installed its in-house 501P1 self-winding mechanical calibre, a slimline power unit with a 40-hour power reserve decorated with circular Côtes de Genève stripes. This is overlaid with an engraved rendition of the Andy Warhol self-portrait on which the dial design is based, carrying Piaget’s logo and Andy Warhol’s signature. Truly collectible.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

• Caliber: 501P1 - Manufacture self-winding movement

• Dial: marqueterie of Onyx, Namibian Serpentine, Pink Opal and Chrysophrase

• Material: Yellow gold

• Diameter: 45x43 mm

• Case back: Representation of the iconic oeuvre of Andy Warhol

• Thickness: 8.08 mm

• Crystal: Anti reflective sapphire crystal

• Water-resistance: 3 bar (30 meters)

• Strap: green alligator leather strap

• Buckle: ardillon buckle in yellow gold

• Limited edition of 50 pieces