The PHILLIPS Hong Kong Watch Auction: XX takes place on 23-25 May, 2025, at our West Kowloon headquarters. The auction includes more than 280 of the world's finest watches – and though we are loath to boast, we truly think it's one of the best catalogues we've ever put together. We'll be highlighting a number of the most interesting lots and stories featured in the sale right here, including the watch highlighted below.
– By Logan Baker
By the mid-1990s, Piaget was at a crossroads. Long known for ultra-thin movements and elegant dress watches, the brand had recently come under the wing of the Vendôme Group (which would eventually become Richemont). With the backing of luxury’s next big powerhouse, Piaget saw an opportunity to elevate itself — technically and culturally — into the rarefied air of haute horlogerie.
In 1995, the brand launched the Gouverneur collection, a short-lived series of high-complication watches housed in precious metal cases. Among them were a split-seconds chronograph and a perpetual calendar, but the pièce de résistance was the Gouverneur Grande Sonnerie, a striking wristwatch so ambitious that Piaget had to look outside its walls to pull it off. That’s where a freelance watchmaker named François-Paul Journe came in.
Before F.P. Journe Was F.P. Journe
At the time, Journe hadn’t yet founded his eponymous brand. He was a hired gun, designing movements for anyone with the budget and vision to commission them. Piaget had both. They tasked him with creating a grande sonnerie — a complication widely considered the most challenging in all of watchmaking. It chimes the hours and quarters automatically, switching seamlessly between grande and petite sonnerie modes, and also functions as a minute repeater on demand.
Journe delivered. What he created was a 37mm × 12mm wristwatch — still among the smallest grand sonneries ever made — that packed in not only a grande and petite sonnerie but also a minute repeater, subsidiary seconds, power reserve, and a silent/chime selector. The movement, known as the caliber 1996P, was manually wound, ran on twin barrels, and included 350 components. It was just 6.7mm thick.
In short, it was a monster. A very elegant monster.
In his own words, this is what F.P. Journe had to say about his experience working with Piaget in a 2023 edition of his in-house magazine, the F.P. Journal:
"Piaget had made a book in 1993 and on one page there was a photo of a minute repeater under which it was written “Grande Sonnerie”. The brand’s marketing department therefore decided to make a genuine grand strike. They put out a call for tenders, I won the contract and created 10 pieces. It was a watch with two barrels. The hammers were already positioned on the dial side and this model was the precursor of mine. In the 2000s, clients asked me to create a grand strike. I started to design one by eliminating all the mistakes I had made on the previous one, while improving it. The one I made for Piaget was supposed to wind both ways, but the customers didn’t know how to use it and broke everything. I decided to launch mine only if it was unbreakable. Mine has only one spring for both functions - the grand strike and the hour display - and you wind it like a normal watch."
The design was pure Piaget: clean, balanced, and understated. But look closer and you’ll find early hints of what would become F.P. Journe’s stylistic signatures. Most strikingly, the hammers for the chimes are visible on the dial side — something virtually unheard of in the mid-1990s. Normally, the hammers and gongs are hidden on the back of the movement, far from sight. By placing them front and center, Journe injected a touch of drama into an otherwise restrained watch.
He also included a chime/silence selector — another innovation that would later appear in his own Sonnerie Souveraine, which debuted in 2006. You could say this was the watch that laid the groundwork for Journe’s entire approach to striking watches. He even admitted, years later, that the money he made from Piaget helped fund the launch of his own brand.
Piaget originally planned to make ten examples. In the end, they only managed six. The reason? Complexity. Making a grande sonnerie at all is a tall order. Making one this thin, this reliable, and this small was borderline absurd. It pushed the limits of what was even possible in the 1990s, a time when the mechanical renaissance was just gaining traction again.
Of those six known pieces, only two had ever surfaced publicly before this latest one appeared at auction through Phillips. That makes three known to have changed hands on the open market. The rest? Either buried in private collections or simply lost to time.
The example recently offered by Phillips stands out for another reason: it’s the only one known in white gold with a silvered dial. Most were cased in yellow or rose gold. There’s even one with a diamond-set 40mm case, reportedly made for the 1997 SIHH show, which didn’t sell until nearly a decade later — for over $800,000.
Why This Watch Matters
Let’s be blunt: this isn’t just a cool vintage Piaget. It’s one of the earliest wristwatches to combine a grand sonnerie, petite sonnerie, and minute repeater in a wearable format. It predates Journe’s own sonnerie by more than a decade. It was also a one-off collaboration between a major brand and a then-unknown independent watchmaker who would go on to become one of the greatest of his generation.
For collectors of F.P. Journe, this is an origin story in metal. For collectors of Piaget, it’s a rare look into a time when the brand swung for the fences. And for horology fans in general, it’s proof that even during the shaky early years of the quartz recovery, there were still people pushing the limits.
We talk a lot about the rebirth of mechanical watchmaking in the 1990s. Most of that attention goes to brands like Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe, and the rise of independents like Dufour and Voutilainen. But this watch is a reminder that Piaget, too, played a role — however quiet — in that story.
The Gouverneur Grande Sonnerie didn’t become a collection. Piaget didn’t build a sonnerie empire. The watch was discontinued by 2000 along with the rest of the Gouverneur line, as the brand refocused on the Polo and its signature ultra-thins. But for one brief moment, Piaget stepped into the ring with the heaviest hitters and showed what it could do.
This watch is the kind of piece that makes you rethink what you thought you knew about a brand like Piaget. And for collectors looking to own a part of horological history that also happens to wear beautifully on the wrist, it doesn’t get much better.
Six watches. One movement designer. One moment in time when everything clicked.
The Piaget Gouverneur Grande Sonnerie is a bridge between old-school Swiss maisons and the future of independent watchmaking. It’s a sleeper hit from an era that still doesn’t get enough credit. And if you're lucky enough to come across one, you’re not just buying a watch — you’re holding a piece of horological evolution.
Don’t expect another one to show up anytime soon.