Mass Effect: The Code 11.59 By Audemars Piguet Starwheel

It's not what you do, it's how you do it.

As a watch writer with some 20 or more years of offering opinions under my belt, I suppose I am expected to have a definitive viewpoint on watches in general and certain high-interest and high visibility watches in particular (I guess it’s off-brand for me not to have had anything to say about the Rolex Sea-Dweller Deepsea Challenge but I might get there in the end). However, I’ve been struggling to formulate a clear notion of how I feel about the new Audemars Piguet Code 11.59 Starwheel ever since the first images were released, and I don’t know that my mixed feelings are going to go anywhere any time soon.

The Starwheel is an example of a so-called wandering hours watch. As produced by Audemars Piguet, there are three round satellites, each of which carries four numerals representing the hours. The satellites take turns passing under the arc marked out for the minutes, and each disk rotates after passing the 60 minute mark in order to line up the next hour numeral correctly.

The original Audemars Piguet Starwheel wandering hours watches came in a variety of shapes and sizes, including round (probably the best known models) and the tonneau-shaped John Sheaffer minute repeater models. AP says that between 1991 and 2003, around 30 different models were produced, including pocket watches (one of which, ref. 25913, had a conventional display for the time, with a wandering calendar indication on the back.)

Audemars Piguet Starwheel wandering hours wristwatch (image, WatchBox)

The wandering hours complication is much older than that, having been invented, as far as anyone can tell, by the Campani brothers in Italy, for a clock made for Pope Alexander VII which was delivered in 1656. The clock was intended to be a night clock. The hour aperture moved across an arc which represented the minutes and which had markers for the quarter hours and the clock had an oil lamp inside it, which illuminated the hour display. The story goes that the Pope, a man whom I have read was disinterested in politics, preferring literature and philosophy, and who kept his coffin in his bedchamber to remind him of his inevitable end (and everyone else’s) suffered from intractable insomnia. Sensitive to noise, he asked for a clock that would tell the time at night without chiming the hours and the result was the Campani wandering hours clock.

A largely forgotten feature of the Campani wandering hours clock is the presence of a very unusual escapement. In 1656 the only game in town in terms of escapements was the verge, which had been at that point, in use since about the mid-13th century (the anchor escapement was on the verge, hahaha, of being invented, however; Robert Hooke is generally credited with having thought up the anchor escapement in 1657). The verge is a fairly noisy piece of gear as escapements go, producing a distinctive clack-clack as it operates, and the Pope wanted his clock to be silent. The Campani brothers therefore invented a “silent crank” escapement, in which a pendulum mounted on a crank allows a wheel to rotate that controls the speed of the going train (if you’re interested, one of the Campani clocks is in the British Museum and you can see the mechanism quite clearly). As far as I can tell the silent crank escapement was a one-off; nobody else seems to have picked it up as it was probably not very precise.

Wandering hours pocket watch by Breguet, 1928. “Heures Sautante” variation, designed by Robert Cart, Le Locle (image, Christie’s)

Since it was invented, the wandering hours complication has been in somewhat sporadic use – Breguet made wandering hours pocket watches and more recently, Urwerk has of course built an entire horological world of design around the wandering hours complication; it’s been used by makers as diverse as Vincent Calabrese and Alain Silberstein, as well as Vacheron Constantin, Parmigiana Fleurier, and Moser. Wandering hours watches and clocks seem to come in two basic versions – there are those which operate basically identically to the original Campani design, and those, like the Breguet shown above, in which the hour aperture rotates through a full 360º, jumping as it passes the 60 minute mark.

Alain Silberstein, “Cyclope” wandering hours watch, 1993 (image, Bonham’s)

Audemars Piguet’s Starwheel watches stand out a bit from the competition in terms of making the wandering hours mechanism visible (although that’s also the standard practice at Urwerk). The Starwheel watches get their name from the visible star-shaped wheels, held in place by beautifully shaped jumper springs, which carry the hour numerals. A major feature of the original designs (or at least some of them; one of the John Sheaffer repeaters had a closed dial, with just the minute arc and current hour visible) are the transparent sapphire satellite disks and the overall effect of the original Starwheel watches, is one of great elegance and even a slight formality in execution.

John Sheaffer Starwheel Minute Repeater, c. 1995 (image, Christie’s)

Which brings us in due course to the Code 11.59 By Audemars Piguet Starwheel. The new Starwheel is a very different animal than any of its predecessors – the case, dial and general execution make it as much a break with the past, as a connection to it. First of all, it’s a much larger watch; the original round-cased Starwheel watches were 36mm in diameter (the John Sheaffers were 37mm across) and the Code model is 41mm x 10.7mm. In photos it looks thicker than it actually is, partly thanks to the architecture of the case (white gold, with a black ceramic case middle) and partly thanks to the complexity of the dial. The execution of the wandering hours complication is very different from the original models as well. Instead of transparent sapphire satellites, you get solid disks mounted in a rotating carrier that completely surrounds them. Head on, you get a definite impression of massive opacity but the carrier system is actually fairly thin; the satellites are aluminum, so the mechanism which rotates the satellites is not very visible.

Interestingly enough, despite the name, there do not in fact appear to be star wheels in the Code 11.59 Starwheel. Instead, as each satellite passes the 60 minute mark on the minute arc, it begins to rotate constantly and as far as I can tell, each satellite passes through – I think – 2 1/4 full counterclockwise revolutions in order to line up the next hour numeral correctly.

This noticeably contrasts with the original design, in which each satellite rotates counterclockwise in two distinct jumps of 45º each. The result is a slightly more dynamic display in the new model – I think the satellites in the new Code Starwheel are probably more mechanically stable as well, as they appear to be held in position by the series of rounded indentations under the carrier, which function rather like inward-pointing gear teeth.

Now, in the abstract I’m pleased as punch to see the Starwheel complication make a comeback; it’s a signature complication for Audemars Piguet and while nobody really owns the exclusive rights to it, it’s probably true that quite a few wandering hours watches which came along after the original Starwheel watches, might not have appeared at all if AP hadn’t led the charge, so that’s all good.

However, I have reservations about this one. Not everything needs to be re-imagined in a new, hypermodern, “disruptive” mode and while SJX (over at WatchesbySJX) is certainly correct in observing that the new design “ … will certainly not appeal to fans of the original,” (and, by extension, isn’t meant to) I wish that this new Starwheel honored its ancestors just a little bit more. The original Starwheel watches were very much a niche product at the time but as we have all seen over and over again – maybe most notably in what Cartier has been doing with its Privée Collection in recent years – there absolutely is a major new wave of appreciation for classic designs which have stood the test of time. I don’t know if a more-or-less copy/paste of the original design would have done well, and Audemars Piguet got out of the round, stepped-bezel, 36mm case game long ago but they certainly could have made something that more closely approximated the graceful, deceptively simple elegance of the original had they been so inclined.

You can’t really judge a watch on its own merits without actually seeing it and handling it, of course, and there is a certain celestial charm to the Code 11.59 Starwheel, what with the aventurine accents and all – that hint of a starry night sky is a nice shout out to the Star in Starwheel and a reminder of the nocturnal origins of the complication, which after all was originally made for a melancholy priest for whom the night was, as they say, dark and full of terrors.

But as a huge fan of the original Starwheel watches, this feels, at least in terms of AP recognizing some of the elements of its own work which are such an important part of its history, like a bit of a missed opportunity. It’s hard to argue with the bottom line AP has achieved as a luxury brand over the last few years, what with it becoming a billion dollar company and all. However hitting those indisputably impressive revenue goals is just one element of what gives a luxury brand legs.

For this launch, I can’t help feeling, despite the fact that it genuinely tickles me pink to have the Starwheel back in any form at all, that something in the design which respected the original a little more wouldn’t have hurt. As we know from the skyrocketing success of extremely niche designs like the Cartier Crash and the Pebble, there is more than one way to flex, and sometimes a whisper carries further than a shout. Still, there is no doubt that in the metal, the watch might still surprise and delight in ways I can’t predict from images alone. While it doesn’t share the same qualities that made the original Starwheel watches so attractive, there may be a different sort of charm at work here – one rooted not in neoclassical Deco idioms, but in sci-fi inflected retro-futurism.