Piaget Regulateur

At nearly a century old, this Piaget Regulateur is in fantastic shape and quite large for its time at 36mm.

The dial has been refinished some point, no question. Has had a recent service, and fitted with a chocolate distressed alligator strap with dial-matching stitching and a period-correct Piaget signed buckle.

This watch is 36mm excluding the crown and nearly 38mm inclusive of. It is 44mm lug to lug so it wears surprisingly large and is up there with Omega Speedmaster Reduced, Breitling Navitimers, and other watches typically 38/39mm in size. It is 18mm in lug width with a 9.3mm thickness. Gold pated case with a SS back, this is a lovely vintage dress watch you will rarely see offered for sale. Even rarer so with an original buckle.

Piaget as a brand is one of the OG's in the swiss watch industry having been founded in 1874. They have been noted as making some of the thinnest (quartz and automatic) movements and some of the most intriguing gemstones as dials in the industry are just pure class. A truly refined dress watch which will catch a lot of attention.

A regulateur (regulator) watch is characterized by 3 separate hands and dials which each monitor the seconds, minutes, and hour hands respectively. One crown and winding/advancing motion control both the hour and minute hand. Truly an interesting piece.

Back when you had workshops full of watchmakers building watches (or even just one or two), you’d often find a centrally located clock that followed this layout, with the large minute hand taking up visual importance. This allowed the watchmaker to regulate the watch on their bench against the time displayed on the central regulator (and now you know where the name comes from).
In these days of machine-driven, automated regulation, something like a regulator clock being used to fine-tune individual watches is certainly anachronistic. However, it did gift us with an intriguing style. For some folks, focusing in on the minute of the hour is a more important function, which makes this style of some appeal.