Throughout its history, Audemars Piguet has experimented with new materials and forms to create avant-garde aesthetics. It is thanks to the meticulous work of artisans that materials have been ennobled and given a place in the world of watchmaking.

Gold, a noble metal per excellence, has been at the heart of civilisations since ancient times. Rare, brilliant, non-corrosive, and biocompatible, gold embodies wealth, success and the brilliance of the sun. The tools used to shape, engrave and set gold do not require extremely hard metals or sophisticated machinery, but are based on ancient manual craftsmanship.

Since the company's inception, Audemars Piguet's artisans have used this precious metal to create refined timepieces that seamlessly blend timeless elegance with enduring precision.

Introduced in the 1910s, stainless steel became the metal of choice for sports watches a few decades later. However, in the field of Haute Horlogerie, this metal remained rare until 1972 when Audemars Piguet launched the Royal Oak 5402 in response to changing lifestyles.

Its complex design and hand-finishing elevated steel to the status of a noble material, opening up new horizons for the entire industry.

Since the early 2000s, Audemars Piguet has been experimenting with ceramic, a lightweight, high-tech material that is resistant to wear and scratches. Although the exact composition of the ceramic at Audemars Piguet remains a closely guarded secret, it is partly made of Zirconium Oxide powder that is combined with a special binder. Its homogeneous colour is only achieved once the material has been sintered at temperatures above 1,000°C.

Each component is then pre-polished and pre-satin finished. Lines, angles and bezels are meticulously finished by hand to create the Manufacture's signature alternation of polished and satin-brushed surfaces. This meticulous process brings out the uniqueness of the material and its colour, exploiting all its subtleties.

Widely used in the aerospace, automotive and defence industries, carbon is characterised by its strength, toughness and lightness. The first version, used in watchmaking since 1998, is similar to fabric. Long fibres are woven together to form a highly resistant surface. Audemars Piguet first employed this technique in 2004 for the bezel of the Royal Oak Offshore Juan Pablo Montoya (26030RO). In 2007, the Manufacture introduced forged carbon, a material previously used for helicopter rotor blades, to the watchmaking world. Forged carbon differs from conventional carbon in that shorter strands of carbon are randomly placed in the resin, providing optimum torsional strength in all directions.

In 2024, Audemars Piguet went one step further and launched a new high-tech coloured forged carbon created in its R&D workshops. Unlike previous generations of carbon, the Manufacture’s Chroma Forged Technology (CFT) makes it possible to colour the carbon fibres directly, instead of the resin, and to arrange them as desired in the component produced, opening up new creative possibilities. This non-porous CFT carbon also offers unprecedented resistance to humidity, heat and shocks.