This is the 150th Anniversary grande sonnerie, and it is the only reference in the collection with a crystal opal dial. Opal is not a material the watch industry uses often, for the straightforward reason that it is soft, unpredictable and impossible to specify: every stone carries its own internal play of colour and no two dials cut from it are the same. Putting one on a grande sonnerie, which is already the most demanding movement a manufacturer can build, means committing the hardest watchmaking in the house to a dial that cannot be replicated if it fails. The case is white gold at 41 mm across and 13.5 mm thick, the inner bezel is blue, and the hands are white gold sticks. It is no longer part of the current collection.
The case measures 41 mm across and 13.5 mm thick in white gold, and keeping a striking watch of this complexity under fourteen millimetres is the engineering claim that underwrites the whole reference. Chiming watches are normally thick, because the gongs, the striking train and the governor all need room, and a grande sonnerie needs more of each than a repeater does. White gold gives the case the density and the finish a dress watch wants while remaining a workable medium for sound, and the Supersonnerie acoustic work exists specifically to make the chime carry outward rather than be absorbed by the case around it. The dial is crystal opal, framed by a blue inner bezel. Opal produces its colour through internal structure rather than pigment, so the surface shifts as the viewing angle changes and the effect is a play of colour within the stone rather than a colour applied to it. Framing that in blue is the decision that makes the dial legible as a composition rather than as an object, since a neutral frame would have left the opal floating with nothing to sit against. The hands are white gold sticks, and the choice of the plainest possible hand shape is correct here, because anything more elaborate would have competed with a dial that is already doing a great deal. The strap is blue alligator with a white gold folding clasp, picking up the inner bezel rather than the dial, which is the only stable colour on the watch to match against. That is a real constraint rather than a stylistic note. An opal dial has no fixed colour to coordinate with, so any attempt to match a strap to the dial would succeed at one viewing angle and fail at every other, and the only defensible approach is to match something that does not move. The blue inner bezel is that element, and the alligator picks it up. The folding clasp keeps the strap in a closed loop, which suits a watch its owner activates deliberately rather than merely wears.
The function set is a grande sonnerie, a petite sonnerie and a minute repeater, with hours, minutes and small seconds. The three chiming modes are selectable and do different things. Grande sonnerie strikes the hours and the quarters automatically as they pass, which requires the movement to store enough energy to run a striking train all day alongside the timekeeping. Petite sonnerie strikes the hours only, which is quieter and far less demanding of that reserve. The minute repeater chimes the exact time on demand, sounding hours, quarters and the remaining minutes. A carillon means the striking runs on more than the usual two gongs, producing a fuller and more musical sequence than a conventional two-note repeater. There is no date and no further complication, because there is neither room nor reason for one.
Within Audemars Piguet's structure Code 11.59 was launched as a third pillar alongside the Royal Oak and the Royal Oak Offshore, and it is the only one of the three not built around an octagonal bezel and an integrated bracelet. Within the line the 26397 grande sonneries sit at the absolute top, above the repeaters, the tourbillons and the perpetual calendars. Among the grande sonneries themselves the standard references use guilloche and flinque enamel dials in blue, and the anniversary references replace that with a stone. Its counterpart in the anniversary pair uses a sapphire dial in a rose gold case, which is a colder and more technical answer to the same brief. An anniversary designation also means a fixed production run, which for a watch of this complexity is a very small number even by the standards of the category.
This reference is for a collector who wants the hardest watch the house makes and wants the dial to be the thing nobody else can have. That is an unusual pairing, because a grande sonnerie is normally bought for the movement alone and the dial is expected to stay out of the way. Opal does the opposite and insists on being looked at. The two decisions together produce a watch that is simultaneously the most serious and the most decorative thing in the collection, which is not a combination most manufacturers would attempt. Now that the reference has left the catalogue the production is closed, and grande sonneries are made in numbers so small that any specific configuration is effectively unique in the market. The buyer is someone who wanted the anniversary reference rather than the standard one and knew exactly why.
