Gerald Charles

Gérald Charles Genta designed the two watches that defined the luxury sports category — the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak in 1972 and the Patek Philippe Nautilus in 1976 — along with work for Omega, IWC, Bulgari and others. He was called the Picasso of watches, and he was not especially modest about it.

He founded his first eponymous company in 1969 and sold it to The Hour Glass in 1996. In 2000, at sixty-nine, he started again with Gerald Charles, using his first and middle names.

This was the brand he made for himself rather than for a client, and the Maestro case shows it: deliberately asymmetric, with the right side of the bezel curved differently from the left, so that it sits against the wrist rather than sitting squarely on it. No brief from a manufacture would have survived that decision.

Genta died in 2011. The company remains independent and family-owned, run by the Ziviani family, producing the Maestro in small numbers.

Gerald Charles holds 16 models, from £15,960 to £76,920. Half cost less than £23,160, and a quarter less than £17,125. 16 of 16 are automatic. 6 are stocked by more than one retailer, giving 22 offers in total. Prices are checked nightly against the retailers’ own feeds.

1972

Genta designs the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak.

1976

Designs the Patek Philippe Nautilus.

1996

Sells his first eponymous company.

2000

Founds Gerald Charles.

2011

Genta dies; the family-owned company continues.