About this watch

Reference 26331ST is the Royal Oak Selfwinding Chronograph in steel, and the silvered dial with black counters is the one the market calls the Panda. Of the chronograph dials Audemars Piguet has put in this case, it is the one that best survives being looked at every day. The dial is the thing to understand. Grande Tapisserie is not a print or a stamp — it is a grid of tiny raised squares cut into the brass blank on antique rose-engine machines, one square at a time, before the plate is galvanised and finished. It takes hours per dial and it cannot be rushed, which is why the pattern has depth that photographs badly and reads beautifully in the hand. Tilt it and the whole surface changes character; hold it still and it is almost plain. Audemars Piguet describe this as a two-tone dial with the black chronograph counters at nine and three deliberately expanded, and that asymmetry is what makes the Panda work. Enlarging the two flanking registers pushes them towards the dial edge and leaves the centre open, so the watch reads as a face with two eyes rather than a cluster of holes. Against the frosted white gold and grey-dial chronographs in the same case, this is the plainest and the…