Piaget's transformation was from a traditional Swiss watchmaker into a house known for glamorous, highly jeweled watches made for the international jet set. That shift was visible not only in the amount of gold and diamonds Piaget used, but in the materials it chose for the dials themselves.
By 1963, the house was making watches with ornamental stone dials. Lapis is cut from a natural mineral aggregate, not manufactured to a watchmaker's dimensions. The dial has to be sliced thinly, cut accurately, polished without losing the stone's surface character, and fitted to a watch case without cracking it. The blue cannot simply be ordered to match. Each piece comes with its own pattern of color and pyrite, those tiny metallic flecks that make the surface look, improbably, like a night sky someone has scattered gold dust across.
The Dancer was one of Piaget's great expressions of this new approach. Introduced in the 1980s, the collection took the watch into curved, asymmetrical forms and lavish combinations of gold, diamonds and ornamental stones to make the watch read as jewellery first and timepiece second.
The1996 Dancer, reference 84024BK81, gives into that spectacle fully. Piaget surrounds the lapis with 18-karat white gold and diamonds. The bezel alternates polished white-gold sections with rows of brilliant-cut diamonds. Inside, twelve diamond hour markers punctuate the lapis ring, while the center of the dial is entirely pavé set with diamonds. The effect is almost synesthetic: the blue lapis, the flashes of pyrite and the field of diamonds seem to turn light into something audible. You can almost hear the champagne being poured.
The whole watch is a brilliant Piaget equation: a very old stone, painstakingly reduced to the thickness required of a watch dial, set into a very modern piece of jewellery meant to dazzle and delight across continents and time zones.
Maker: Piaget
Model: Dancer 84024BK81
Year: 1996
Material: 18k White Gold, Diamonds, Lapis
Dial: Pavé Diamonds and Lapis Lazuli
Case Measurement: 33mm
Movement: Quartz
Condition: Very Good
Weight: 83 Grams
Size: Adjustable, Fits Up to 6.5" Wrist
Includes: Piaget Box
Made in Switzerland
All vintage and pre-owned watches sold by Stephanie Windsor are guaranteed to be genuine and authentic. We also guarantee the proper functioning of your watch’s mechanical movement for one (1) year from the date of purchase. Our warranty does not cover damage resulting from accidents, misuse, neglect, water damage or normal wear and tear. Please note that we do not guarantee waterproofing on vintage or pre-owned timepieces. We therefore do not recommend submerging your timepiece in water or any liquid.
