Black aventurine is considerably rarer than blue, and this is the rose gold flying tourbillon that uses it. Aventurine is normally encountered as a deep blue glass shot through with metallic particles, and the visual reference everyone reaches for is a night sky. In black the effect changes entirely: the ground gives back nothing at all and the flecks read as isolated points of light on a surface with no colour in it, which is a colder and more severe result than the blue version produces. Rendered as enamel rather than cut glass, fired onto the dial with the flecks carried in the enamel itself, it is also the harder of the two processes. The case is rose gold at 41 mm across and 11.8 mm thick, and it is no longer part of the current collection.
The case measures 41 mm across and 11.8 mm thick in rose gold, and that height is the quiet achievement of the reference. Tourbillons are usually tall watches, and holding one under twelve millimetres in a 41 mm case means it sits flat on the wrist and goes under a cuff, which very few do. The bezel is rose gold and matches the case, so the metal runs unbroken from the crystal out to the lugs. Rose gold against a black dial is a deliberate contrast rather than a harmony, and it is what stops the watch from becoming purely severe, since a white gold case with the same dial would have produced something almost entirely cold. The dial is black aventurine enamel. Because the flecks are suspended in fired enamel rather than in cut glass, the surface is chemically bonded to the base rather than mounted on it, and the depth is built up through firing rather than sliced from a block. Under light the flecks appear at varying depths within the enamel and shift as the wrist turns, while the ground itself stays absolutely dark, which is what produces the isolated points rather than a general shimmer. The applied hour markers and hands are rose gold, warm against the black and the only colour anywhere on the face. The inner bezel is black lacquer and matches the dial, so the black is continuous to the edge of the aperture. The strap is hand-stitched black alligator in a large square scale with a rose gold folding clasp matching the case. Matching the strap to the dial rather than contrasting with it is the consistent decision on a watch this reduced, since the black runs from the inner bezel through the dial and out along the strap with only the rose gold interrupting it in three places. The folding clasp keeps the strap in a closed loop and distributes the weight of a precious metal case more evenly across the wrist than a pin buckle would, which on a slim watch is what stops it rolling rather than sitting flat.
The function set is a flying tourbillon with hours and minutes. A flying tourbillon is supported from below only, with no bridge crossing the top of the rotating carriage, so the assembly turns apparently unsupported and remains visible from the dial side. On an openworked watch that visibility is the entire subject; here it works differently, because the dial is a solid enamel field rather than a skeleton, so the tourbillon reads as one moving aperture in a still surface. That is a more restrained presentation and on a black dial a more dramatic one, since the aperture is the only place on the watch where anything is happening. There is no date and no seconds display. On a dial whose appeal depends on an unbroken graded surface every further aperture is a subtraction, and this reference accepts exactly one.
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 26396 flying tourbillons sit above the chronographs and below the repeaters, and they are where the collection argues on movement rather than on dial colour. Its direct sibling is the white gold version with a blue aventurine enamel dial carrying a smoked effect, and the two reverse each other in both metal and ground. Between them the black version is the harder to place and the more distinctive, since blue aventurine has become a familiar material across the industry and black has not.
This reference is for a collector who wants a tourbillon presented as a detail rather than as the subject, and who wants the dial material to be the reason for the purchase. That is a specific taste and this reference serves it precisely. Black aventurine enamel with rose gold is also a combination that reads as almost plain from across a room and reveals itself only close up, where the flecks appear and the aperture is found. It photographs badly, since images render the dial as flat black and lose the flecks entirely. Now that the reference has left the catalogue the production is closed, and enamel dials are produced in far smaller numbers than lacquered ones because the failure rate at firing is real and unrecoverable. The buyer is someone who wants a watch that gives up nothing at a distance.
