A retro-futuristic gem built for collectors who love history—served with technical flair
Audemars Piguet’s latest creation is a rare treat: a rectangular, gadroon-flanked, pink-gold machine that feels both delightfully nostalgic and freshly minted.
Inspired by the 1929 pre-model 1271, the Neo Frame Jumping Hour channels the aerodynamic optimism of the Streamline Moderne movement—those sleek, rounded forms once borrowed from trains and ocean liners—and gives it a distinctly 2026 upgrade.
The case alone is a conversation starter. Measuring 32.6mm x 34mm, it is carved in 18K pink gold with eight vertical gadroons per side, all matched with almost obsessive precision across the caseback, lugs, crown and rotor.
Audemars Piguet even reworked ergonomics and built a new crown to make this vintage-inspired geometry wear comfortably today.
Then there is the star of the show: a black PVD-treated sapphire dial with two gold-rimmed apertures for jumping hours and trailing minutes. What looks clean and minimal is, in reality, a technical puzzle.
Because the dial is sapphire with no metal framing at 12 and six o’clock, Audemars Piguet had to invent a bonding-and-screwing technique just to secure water resistance to 20m.
Even the strap, a black calfskin number with a fresh motif conceived by the design team, flows right up to the exposed sapphire between the lugs for a seamless, period-correct vibe.
Collectors will appreciate what lies beneath that display: Calibre 7122, the Manufacture’s first self-winding jumping hour movement.
Derived from the Royal Oak “Jumbo” Calibre 7121, it adds an instantaneous hour jump, a titanium hour disc for better shock resistance, and a patented safeguard that prevents accidental mis-jumping during impacts.
With a 52-hour power reserve and refined finishing visible through the sapphire caseback—think Côtes de Genève, satin brushing and a fluted gold rotor—the movement balances modern robustness with classical decoration.
What gives this release its spark is how deeply it taps into Audemars Piguet’s heritage.
The brand made 347 jumping hour wristwatches between 1924 and 1951, and the platinum pre-model 1271 preserved in the Musée Atelier directly informs this reinterpretation.
The result is a timepiece that feels like a bridge across a century: the glamour of the 1930s, rebuilt with today’s manufacturing precision.
