Audemars Piguet Bamboo 275789 Vintage 'Ladies' Yellow Gold Champagne Diamond Ruby Dial Quartz

Try to read the time on this watch and you may find yourself pausing for a second, because the dial is so completely carpeted in diamonds that the slender hands almost vanish among the sparkle. That is entirely the point. This Audemars Piguet Bamboo is a watch where telling the time has become almost secondary to pure adornment, its whole face given over to a field of gemstones, and the result is one of the most glamorous, unapologetically opulent jewellery watches the house has made.

The dial is the heart of it, and it is spectacular. It is paved, edge to edge, with brilliant-cut diamonds, set so closely together in the technique jewellers call pavé, literally paved, that almost no metal shows between them and the whole surface becomes a continuous shimmer of white fire. Scattered across that glittering field, marking the hours, are small round rubies, their deep red glowing warm against the ice-white diamonds. That pairing of ruby and diamond is one of the most regal in all of jewellery, the richest of the precious coloured stones set among the brightest of the white ones, red and white playing off each other, and here it turns the dial into a tiny, dazzling tapestry of gems. There are no numerals and no markers but the rubies; the time is simply there to be found among the stones.

Setting a dial like this is painstaking work, each diamond and each ruby placed and secured by hand in a tight, even carpet so that the surface reads as one unbroken sheet of light rather than a collection of individual stones. It is the craft of the jeweller every bit as much as the watchmaker, and it gives the watch a density of sparkle that a few scattered diamonds never could, the entire face alive with light from every angle.

Framing that blaze of gems is the watch's signature, the Bamboo motif, worked here in warm yellow gold. The bezel and the links of the integrated bracelet are shaped into ridged, segmented forms that echo the jointed stalks of bamboo, slender gold canes broken by fine raised rings, running in parallel rows down the whole length of the watch. In glowing yellow gold it reads as rich and organic, nature abstracted into precious metal, and it wraps the wrist as a single warm golden cuff with the jewelled dial set into it like a gem into a bracelet.

Everything about the watch is pitched for warmth and opulence. The yellow gold is the most classical and glowing of the precious metals, and against it the diamonds blaze and the rubies burn red, the whole object radiating a rich, golden, maximalist glamour. This is a cocktail watch in the truest sense, a piece made to be worn in the evening, to catch the candlelight and the eye, jewellery first and timepiece second, the kind of watch that finishes an outfit with a flourish of fire.

It runs on a quartz movement, the practical, effortless choice for a jewel like this, always ready and never needing winding, so the watch can simply be slipped on and enjoyed. And it is, beneath all the sparkle, an Audemars Piguet, from one of the three most revered names in watchmaking, the jeweller's art and the watchmaking pedigree carried together in a single small, glittering object.

That is what makes this Bamboo so dazzling. It takes the house's organic bamboo bracelet, rendered in warm yellow gold, and sets at its heart a dial paved entirely with diamonds and studded with glowing rubies, a face so densely jewelled that the time hides among the stones. Regal in its ruby-and-diamond colouring, maximal in its sparkle, and worn as a single rich golden cuff, it is a true cocktail jewel from a great name, and it carries that glamorous opulence with all the craftsmanship of one of the finest houses in the craft.