Piaget Andy Warhol Camouflage builds Warhol’s self-portrait from 27 pieces of stone and gold

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Piaget took Andy Warhol’s 1986 Camouflage self-portrait, the one with neon camouflage poured across his face, and rebuilt it as stone marquetry: 27 individually cut pieces of sodalite, turquoise, and gold fitted together inside a 45mm white gold cushion case. There are no numerals on the dial, no minute track, and no date window. Two dauphine hands and its logo at 12 are the only things that aren’t artwork.

Camouflage is the pattern, translated. Deep blue sodalite carries the dark patches and brighter turquoise takes the light ones, while satin-finished yellow gold and polished rose gold fill the gaps where Warhol’s screen print ran neon. Because the blues are natural stone, the grain shifts from piece to piece and from dial to dial, and the pattern never sits as flat as the print it came from.

Warhol painted the Camouflage self-portraits in 1986, near the end of his career.

He layered military camouflage over his own face until the portrait and the pattern fought for the same space, and the dial keeps that fight: the face is gone, abstracted into patches of blue and gold, and what’s left is the tension between hiding and being seen that made the paintings worth licensing in the first place.

Price: CHF 74,000 (price on request in the US)
Where to buy: Piaget

A dial that takes more than 100 hours to build

More than 100 hours of work go into each dial, and the process explains the number: each piece of stone is cut to its shape in the pattern, thinned, polished, and set against its neighbors with the seams closed tight enough to disappear. Stone doesn’t forgive the way metal does, though. A piece cut a fraction too small can’t be bent into place, so it gets replaced, and sodalite and turquoise chip if the cutting is rushed.

That’s the tradeoff the whole watch runs on. A printed or lacquered dial could copy the pattern for a sliver of the cost and look much the same from across a room, but the pattern here is the material itself, cut and assembled by hand, and only 86 of them will ever exist.

The case is the watch Warhol actually wore

Nothing about the shape is a stylist’s idea of the seventies. Its cushion case reproduces reference 15102, designed by Jean-Claude Gueit and produced from 1972 to 1977 in 18-karat yellow gold, with stepped gadroons framing the dial and the crown tucked into the case side. Warhol owned seven of the brand’s watches, and by the brand’s account he bought his 15102 in 1973. Seven was a collection, not an accident, though the 15102 is the one tied to his name.

A 2014 revival brought the design back as the Black Tie, the name went official in 2024 under a license with The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and one Warhol watch a year has followed since. Last year’s was the Collage: 50 pieces in yellow gold with pink opal, green chrysoprase, and yellow serpentine. Camouflage swaps the case to rhodium-finished 18-karat white gold, 45mm across and 8.08mm thick.

Inside is its in-house Caliber 501P1: 3.63mm thick, self-winding, with a 40-hour power reserve, 23 jewels, a tungsten winding rotor, and a 4 Hz beat. That thinness is why the case holds at 8.08mm instead of swelling into a hockey puck.

It drives the hours and minutes and nothing else, which suits a dial with no room for a seconds hand or a date, and the finishing is real, circular Côtes de Genève and beveled bridges included, though you’ll never see it: the caseback is solid white gold, laser-engraved with the logo, Warhol’s signature, and the edition number.

It wears on a navy alligator strap closed with a white gold pin buckle, fitted straight into the lugless case, and water resistance is 30 meters. Nothing about it pretends to be a tool watch; it’s jewelry with a movement inside, and it’s priced like it knows that.

Edition size matches the artwork’s year: 86 pieces for the 1986 self-portraits. Pricing runs CHF 74,000 in Switzerland, and in the US the brand lists it at price on request, sold through its boutiques, with no published dollar figure, no online checkout, and no discount coming. When the 86 are spoken for, the secondary market sets the number, and the house’s stone-dial watches have a long history of holding their audience there.

Price: CHF 74,000 (price on request in the US)
Where to buy: Piaget

This one’s buyer is a collector who wants the one watch in the box that’s a piece of Pop Art first and a timekeeper second. Everyone else can get the same case and Warhol name in the regular Andy Warhol collection for considerably less, in stone dials that don’t need 100 hours of marquetry. Camouflage charges for the artwork and the handwork, and on those two terms it delivers.

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