Edward-Auguste Piguet

Edward-Auguste Piguet co-founded Audemars, Piguet & Cie in 1875 with his childhood friend Jules-Louis Audemars, taking primary responsibility for the regulation, adjustment and commercial development of the firm's complicated watches while Audemars concentrated on movement construction, a partnership structure typical of the Vallée de Joux's collaborative complication-making tradition.

Piguet's commercial stewardship helped the young firm secure a clientele among European royalty and wealthy private collectors during a period when complicated watches were the preserve of a small specialist market, and the partnership's early success established the foundation for the firm's later twentieth- and twenty-first-century prominence as Audemars Piguet.

As with his partner, Piguet the individual craftsman and businessman should be distinguished from the modern global luxury brand carrying his name; this encyclopedia treats the historical founding partnership and the present-day manufacture as related but distinct subjects.