News of the latest version of Girard-Perregaux?s Laureato raises the question of how to make these complicated designs work
By James Gurney

Even though skeleton watches have been around in the modern, contemporary form for a decade or more, I still see these watches through a prism tainted with the memory of ?traditional? skeletonisation, with its gothic, almost Rain Man, detail and complexity. That means the heart slightly sinks when another favourite gets the skeleton treatment. However, designed with care and with the right case, skeletons can work very well: it?s a matter of balancing and controlling the elements.
As Girard-Perregaux point out, exposing the interior workings has been a successful basis for architecture since Frank Lloyd-Wright?s Guggenheim Museum in New York, though you would be perfectly justified to say that you don?t want a watch inspired by the Lloyds building in London.
One thing to notice about most skeleton watches is that the design is dominated by shadows. With some exceptions where the movement is both simple and the skeletonisation is taken to the extreme, these watches tend to look quite dark as result. Dark and shadowy dials then need comparatively bold hands and indications, otherwise the legibility suffers as the exposed bridges, barrels and gears camouflage the time functions. You can always stick to white metals to alleviate the darkness problem, but this tends to increase the camouflage issue. To get around this you need a case and d...