Black counters on a black dial is the hardest thing to do on a chronograph, and this reference does it. Every other chronograph in the Code 11.59 line separates its registers from the dial by tone, because that is how a chronograph is normally made readable. Here the dial and the counters are both lacquered black, so the registers do not announce themselves at all and are found by their edges rather than by contrast. What carries the watch instead is the metal: rose gold applied hour-markers and hands, and a rose gold logo formed by galvanic growth, a process that grows the signature onto the dial through electrodeposition rather than stamping or applying it as a separate part. The case is rose gold at 41 mm across and 12.6 mm thick, and it is no longer part of the current collection.
The case measures 41 mm across and 12.6 mm thick in rose gold, around two millimetres taller than the time-and-date references in the line, which is the honest consequence of a flyback movement. It remains slim for a precious metal chronograph and sits flat on the wrist rather than standing off it. The bezel is rose gold and matches the case, so the metal runs continuously from the crystal out to the lugs with nothing interrupting it. The dial is lacquered black with no pattern beneath and no smoking over the top, and the counters are lacquered black as well. That decision is the whole design. A flat black field with black registers means the dial has no tonal information in it at all, and every element that has to be seen must be metal sitting proud of the surface. The applied hour markers and hands are rose gold, and the logo is rose gold grown onto the dial, which produces a signature with real depth at a scale where a conventional applied component would look coarse and a printed one would be flat. On a dial this bare that logo is the element that repays close attention, and on the chronograph it has to hold its own against a layout that a plain reference does not carry. The inner bezel is lacquered black and matches the dial exactly, so the black runs unbroken to the edge of the aperture. The strap is black rubber-coated with a rose gold pin buckle, and unlike several references in this collection the buckle matches the case rather than introducing a second metal. The rubber-coated construction is worth understanding rather than dismissing, since it carries the drape of leather over the surface of rubber. A slim case needs a supple strap, because a stiff one lifts a thin watch at the lugs and undoes the proportions the design depends on, and on a chronograph that already carries extra height the effect compounds. Leather gives suppleness and marks with wear; rubber survives anything and drapes badly; coating one over the other gets both. The pin buckle adds no height beneath the wrist where a folding clasp would.
The function set is a flyback chronograph with hours, minutes, small seconds and a date. A flyback is genuinely more capable than a standard chronograph rather than differently named: a conventional one needs three separate presses to stop, reset and restart between consecutive runs, while a flyback resets and restarts from a single press with the chronograph still running. It was developed for timing intervals back to back and remains the faster version to operate. On this dial the complication is present and deliberately understated, since black counters on a black field make the chronograph almost invisible until it is running. That is a real trade. A collector who wants to read elapsed time at a glance should choose one of the smoked or contrasting-counter references, and a collector who wants a chronograph that looks like a plain watch until it is used will find nothing else in the collection that does this.
Within Audemars Piguet's structure Code 11.59 was introduced as a third pillar alongside the Royal Oak and the Offshore and is the only one of the three not built around an octagonal bezel and an integrated bracelet. Within the line the 26393 chronographs sit above the 15210 selfwinding models and share their case architecture and dial treatments. The same black dial with the galvanic logo exists on a 15210 without the chronograph, and the two together show what happens when a complication is added to the plainest surface in the collection. Among the chronographs this is the only all-black configuration and by a distance the most restrained.
This reference suits a collector who wants a chronograph that does not look like one. That is a specific and slightly contrary taste, and almost nothing else at this level serves it, since the entire visual language of the complication is built on contrasting registers. Black on black in rose gold is a watch that reads as a plain dress piece from any distance and reveals its layout only under direct light. The matching rose gold buckle is worth noting, because several rose gold references in this collection pair the case with a white gold buckle and the inconsistency is visible to anyone who looks. Now that the reference has left the catalogue the production is closed. The buyer is someone who wants the complication for their own use rather than for its appearance.
