The patents held by Patek Philippe offer a glimpse into the history of haute horlogerie.
Patek Philippe’s list of watchmaking firsts is so long that it’s easy to overlook some of them. After all, once you’ve crafted many of the world’s most famously complicated timepieces, inventing the winding crown, various calendar mechanisms, and the split-second chronograph—not to mention the wristwatch itself—the reflexive impulse to tout every last patent and achievement tends to wane.
Among Patek’s less-celebrated milestones is a 1950 invention attributed to an independent watchmaker contracted to Patek Philippe—Louis Cottier—a name well known to watch geeks and collectors of complicated timepieces designed for travelers. Cottier freelanced for various big names in Swiss watchmaking, but his most notable achievements came through his partnership with Patek Philippe.
In the late 19th century, as international travel and communication became possible for more of the world’s population, nations came together and set forth a new standard of 24 world time zones. Prior to the adoption of universal time, the very idea that one could know the precise hour in a place a thousand miles away was revolutionary–until now time was a distinctly local thing. It was Cottier who invented the modern world time watch, in which a pair of crowns control a dynamic timekeeping mechanism to aid travelers in need of the time in multiple destinations. Known for its balanced design and the evocative representation of international place-names corresponding to all 24 time zones, a World Time watch from Patek Philippe makes a statement about its wearer’s presumably international lifestyle.
Complication Combination
The resonant design has since been copied by myriad watchmakers; yet it remains closely associated with Patek through its deep connection to Cottier. It has also proven to be a popular bridge complication between entry-level watches and the high complications that impassion “whale” collectors. The World Time is, importantly, a complication that consumers tend to use, its combination of complexity and approachable price have made it a favorite among younger watch fans. Several years ago Patek Philippe president Thierry Stern, the fourth-generation of his family to lead the brand, told me that the World Time was a strategic complication for winning the next generation of collectors.
On a technical level, combining the world time mechanism with the chronograph—which Patek Philippe did this year—presented an array of engineering challenges. In a bid to maintain a relatively svelte profile, Patek eschewed a running seconds hand. On trying the watch on this year at Baselworld I appreciated this minor design detail. The dial already conveys a lot of information and verges on being busy; subtracting a superfluous function that can be quickly replicated by activating the chronograph makes perfect sense. The chronograph seconds mechanism, meanwhile, has been engineered to sustain the continuous running to which some owners will doubtlessly subject it. The chronograph is also of the flyback variety, meaning it’s a mechanism with roots in the world of pilot’s watches and aviation. How very apropos that it should be married with the World Time, perhaps the ultimate watch for travelers.
The movement at the heart of the World Time Chronograph is the all-new CH 28-520 HU. While this caliber is indeed new, its architecture is strongly influenced by two already-extant mechanisms; the first is the chronograph module of the 5960 Annual Calendar Chronograph, and the second is of course a Patek Philippe World Time module. As is so often the case in complicated watchmaking, stacking the two mechanisms resulted in a tall movement. Even still, the 5930 is the thinnest world time chronograph currently on the market.
Appealing design elements and attention to detail abound in the World Time 5930. The dial is decorated with a swirled guilloche pattern in blue, complemented by the white, silver and blue chapter rings for the seconds counter and 24-hour scale. The coolness of the blue, silver and white accents marries perfectly with a white metal case—in this instance 18-karat gold—secured to the wrist by a blue alligator strap.
The lugs of the 5930G are of the vintage-style, winglet variety. This less integrated style of lugs also appears on the white gold and red gold updates to the 5230 World Time watch.
Nautilus At 40
Though the major product news was the introduction of the doubly complicated Reference 5930, the biggest surprise news for most visitors to BaselWorld was the conspicuous absence of a single Nautilus reference in the 2016 Patek Philippe BaselWorld collection.
To watch collectors, the name Nautilus is synonymous not only with Jules Verne, but with Gérald Genta, whose pivotal watch designs formed the basis of the sport-luxury category in the 1970s, an otherwise inauspicious decade for watch design.
Born in America’s bicentennial year, the Nautilus turned 40 at Baselworld, and yet there was no celebration, no fanfare. We’ll have to wait and see if Patek is waiting to release anniversary models in what remains of 2016. There is a recent precedent for such a maneuver. Two years ago, the company back-loaded its 175th anniversary celebrations into the second half of the year so that it could also roll out a standard BaselWorld collection.
Calendar Watches
Another Patek anniversary just happens to coincide with that of the Nautilus. And that is the 20th anniversary of the Annual Calendar, yet another Patek Philippe invention, and also one meant to appeal to younger collectors in search of an intermediate complication.
In 1996 Patek Philippe presented a wholly new type of calendar watch that was not so simple as the plain calendar and not as complex as the perpetual calendar. The mechanism, aptly named the annual calendar, was programmed to know, for example, that June has 30 days and July has 31. Unfortunately, the calendar’s intelligence falls short of knowing that February’s length varies due to leap and non-leap years. This complication is a bridge between the highly complicated and expensive and the more accessible and straightforward.
Patek Philippe offered a tribute to this invention with two new precious metal versions of the Annual Calendar Ref. 5396. The white gold offering comes with a slate gray dial, and the red gold edition comes with a white dial. Both have Breguet numerals and dauphine hands.
If there was a singular focus to this year’s BaselWorld collection, it was complications. One of Patek Philippe’s most popular high-complications, the Perpetual Calendar Ref. 5327, is now available in a slightly larger size, 39 mm.
According to Larry Pettinelli, Patek Philippe’s North American President, the firm made a concerted effort to renew its emphasis on the perpetual calendar as a complication.
“We had a situation where less complicated watches like the Pilot and the World Time were getting so much attention,” said Pettinelli. “The other watches getting a lot of attention were the minute repeaters and the multi-complications. Those are obviously extremely complex timepieces. So there was this gap. We decided that we needed to focus our attention on perpetual calendars and promote them properly. Having a redesigned perpetual calendar sized at 39 mm was definitely a part of that.”
The new Ref. 5327 is all new in terms of its case dimensions and dials. It has a broader and thinner feeling profile than its predecessors, but it’s far from a radical departure for Patek Philippe. It will replace the Perpetual Calendar Reference 5140, which came in a hair smaller, at 37.2 mm in diameter, in the collection. The movement inside is the automatic Caliber 240 Q with a micro-rotor, a staple within Patek’s range of perpetual calendars for almost four decades.
The Family Stern
In an era that has seen increasing consolidation of luxury brands, it’s unusual that Patek Philippe has remained privately held and guided by a single family for four generations.
As the most recent member of the Stern family to guide Patek Philippe, Thierry Stern is not merely his company’s senior manager. Nor is he a figurehead. Stern and his wife, Sandrine, continue to lead the company’s design efforts. Stern’s time designing watches for Patek Philippe has seen what is arguably Switzerland’s most conservative watch marque take occasionally unexpected risks. The Aquanaut, just such an example, is a Thierry Stern design. He reimagined what is arguably the platonic ideal of the wristwatch when he updated the Calatrava, adding a hunter caseback that seemed made for engraving and personalization. Last year, Stern presented a white gold pilot’s watch with a mid five-figure price tag. While journalists and bloggers had mixed opinions regarding Patek’s Pilot watch, from a commercial standpoint the watch was an unqualified success. The World Time Chronograph follows in the line of Stern designs that have found inspiration in Patek’s archives but also take watch design in unexpected and modern directions. It will be interesting to see how Stern might approach a Nautilus anniversary timepiece if–as many collectors hope–such a tribute is indeed in the offing.
Patek Philippe Horology Program of New York
An almost universal gripe held by watch collectors these days is the state of after-sales service. Time and again, collectors say, the experience of owning a watch falls short of ideal when it’s time for a regularly scheduled cleaning or, worse, when a watch is in need of repair. It’s not unusual for brands to tell clients that their watch must travel across oceans and continents before a watchmaker can begin to fix it.
Patek Philippe has taken this problem on by establishing the Patek Philippe Horology Program of New York. A tuition free watchmaking school overseen by Patek’s North American director of technical services, Laurent Junod, the school aims to train a new class of students each year who are up to the exacting standards of Patek Philippe.
There is no obligation to join Patek Philippe upon graduation, but a job repairing and maintaining timepieces from watchmaking’s most prestigious marque will be extended to qualified graduates of the program. And Patek is ready to on-board plenty of New York-based watchmakers. When renovating the company’s expanded offices in Rockefeller Center, the company devoted a substantial part of the floor plan to extra work stations for future hires.