Piaget Limelight Gala

Limelight Gala High Jewellery

The iconic Limelight Gala wristwatch becomes a work of high jewellery art in this new Limelight Gala High Jewellery edition with its radiant design and audacious mix of different diamond cuts. Brilliant, baguette, and marquise-cut gem cuts capture and reflect the light in different ways for the ultimate sparkle.

The Marquise Cut

The Marquise cut is perhaps the most important in terms of Piaget’s design codes. As legend has it, France’s King Louis XV requested a diamond to be cut in honour of the smile of his beloved Marquise de Pompadour. This new cut allowed the light to shine from the centre of the gemstone, giving it a unique brilliance. Radiance being so dear to Piaget, this unique cut became a signature for the Maison and graces many of its creations. From the very first Haute Joaillerie patrimony collections to the extravagant jewellery watches created in the 1960s, and many of Piaget’s contemporary creations today, the Marquise cut remains a favourite of the Maison.

The Art of Stone Setting

The Limelight Gala High Jewellery timepiece is so much more than a jewellery watch, it is the result of decades of experience of goldsmithing and gem-setting at the highest level. Over 175 hours of high jewellery expertise are needed to complete just one timepiece with over 250 diamonds coming into play. Crafted from 18-karat white gold, the case and the fully integrated and articulated, diamond-set bracelet hug the wrist like a second skin. The mix of diamond cuts is combined with a medley of setting techniques that give the timepiece its resolutely modern appeal. Over 250 diamonds are meticulously positioned using a claw setting for the marquise-cut diamonds, a snow setting on the dial, a channel setting for the baguette-cut diamonds, and a grain setting for the brilliant-cut diamonds on the bracelet.

Stone setting is an art that gives life to a jewel by adorning it with gems. The jeweller will do everything to highlight the brilliance of the gemstone, its colour, and its unique beauty. This art is considered the most demanding operation of the goldsmith’s work, requiring a very special type of expertise and years of experience that is both technical and highly artistic.

To create the perfect setting, the gem-setter adjusts and fixes each stone, sublimating its beauty, while preserving the harmony of the design to allow the stones to shine. The choice of setting will be made depending on the functionality of the setting and the aesthetic design. The type of gem, its fragility, its transparency, its cut, and its size are also all chosen carefully for maximum effect.

At Piaget, in the “Atelier de l’Extraordinaire”, where the High Jewellery creations are set, the Maison’s gem setters are constantly experimenting with new ideas, following the Maison’s motto to “Always do better than necessary”, especially when trying different types of settings that will reflect the light in different ways.

The Limelight Gala Precious

The Limelight Gala Precious is a work of radiance, intensity, and vibrancy. It highlights a malachite dial framed with a beautifully coloured gradient setting of tsavorites and diamonds on the asymmetrical bezel. Piaget has the highest selection criteria for its malachite dials. Each semi-precious stone has to be deeply coloured and feature a regular grain with contrasts, possess curved lines, and show no presence of crystals in its structure. The timepiece is housed in a 32mm white gold case and the malachite dial is combined with a central circle fully paved with diamonds using the snow setting. A keen eye with notice that this shape within a shape is a recurring theme at Piaget, with this timepiece taking its inspiration from the Maison’s patrimony pieces.

Tsavorites

It is a challenge to find beautifully coloured tsavorites with a round brilliant cut. This is because the round brilliant cut is made to have the maximum brilliance, which is not usually desired for coloured stones, where you want to intensify the internal colour, making this cut extremely difficult to find. It is for this reason that Piaget had these gemstones custom-cut. The aesthetic choice was for the tsavorites to have the same number of facets as the diamonds for an elegant and harmonious setting that does not compromise on the intensity of the colour or light.

It takes several months to source and select the perfect stones to obtain the optimal gradient. Not only do the Maison’s gemmologists need to create the perfect gradient for each watch, but they also need to match the gradients to each timepiece in the collection. The art of colour pairing and shading is very important to Piaget and this particular colour gradient has been selected to provide a strong contrast with the malachite dial.

The timepiece is paired with Piaget’s signature engraved Palace Décor bracelet whose texture is so fine that it looks almost like the fabric from an haute couture gown. This is the mastery of assembling bracelet links that Piaget has been perfecting for decades.

The Limelight Gala Precious counts 174 diamonds and 22 tsavorites and took 22 hours to craft, in terms of the case and the gem setting. It is powered by Manufacture automatic movement 501P1 that is on full view through a sapphire caseback.

Both the Limelight Gala High Jewellery and Limelight Gala Precious show the Maison’s excellence in sourcing the world’s most exceptional precious and hard stones, as well as their savoir-faire in bringing out all their natural beauty. Depth of colour, shimmering and sparkling effects, along with mesmerizing designs all result in timepieces that were made to take the stage.