Blog
World of Patek Philippe

World of Patek Philippe

Nicholas Foulkes digs into the history of the world's most important watch brand.

NICHOLAS FOULKES The British historian, book author and journalist is considered the most profound connoisseur of Patek Philippe. For beyond, he comments on specific epochs and phenomena.

THE GLORIOUS SIX

The expression of time in all its diversity: the combination of chronograph and perpetual calendar is Patek Philippe’s speciality.

1518 – 2499 – 3970 – 5020 – 5970 – 5270: For the aficionado of Patek Philippe, this sequence of numbers reads like poetry, each evoking an important timepiece. When viewed in sequence, they are like a ‘roman fleuve’, telling one of the most beautiful stories in watchmaking. Patek Philippe cannot claim to have invented the chronograph, the perpetual calendar or the moonphase indicator. But Patek announced its intention to bring these complications from the pocket watch to the wrist early on in the 1920s: with the first split-second chronograph wristwatch; the first standard production chronograph in an officer case; and in 1925 the famous Serial Number 97975, the first perpetual calendar wristwatch.

However, it was not until 1941 that the two complications were brought together: as a watch in the form of the Reference 1518 – the first ever series-produced perpetualcalendar. It was this watch that gave rise to the now- familiar dial design that has characterised Patek Philippe’s perpetual- calendar chronographs ever since: two windows in the upper half of the dial displaying day and month, the running seconds at nine and the minute counter at three o’clock, with the moonphase indicator elegantly located in a larger diameter subdial at six o’clock.

This arrangement of the information around the dial is pleasing to the eye.

It lends this complication combination a visual identity that is reinforced by the long production runs enjoyed by the Reference 1518’s main successors in the twentieth century, of which there have only been two: the storied Reference 2499, regarded by many as the ultimate expression of the genre, remained in production for around three decades before being superseded in 1985 by the Reference 3970, which itself was produced for 20 years.

The Reference 3970 was in fact an inflexion point in terms of production. Significantly more examples of this model were launched on the market than of its very rare predecessors. It was produced in still relatively small numbers for a two-decade run by today’s standards, but substantial for a watch of such complexity and quality at that time – and evidence of the dominating stature of Patek Philippe in this rarefied double complication.

It is also worth noting the existence of two other References from the 1980s and 1990s: the 3971, a variant of the 3970; and the highly idiosyncratic cushion-cased 5020, a personal favourite of mine for its quirkiness.

The calibre CH 27-70 Q used by the Reference 3970 also appeared in the Reference 5970. Thierry Stern was asked by his father to design a replacement for the Reference 3970. His answer was to create a modern masterpiece. At 40mm in diameter, it was slightly bigger than its predecessors. This made the indications (particularly the date) more legible. Production may only have been from 2004 to 2010, but in a surprisingly varied range of dial colours and metals that has kept collectors busy since its discontinuation.

Currently the mantle of Patek’s signature combination is worn by the noble Reference 5270, which is equipped with Patek Philippe’s in-house chronograph calibre CH 29-535 PS Q. A day/night indicator was added, and the leap-year indicator moved from a subdial shared with the minute totaliser to a small circular aperture – but apart from that, the dial architecture remains as its forebears.

Beyond the horological virtuosity, and the undeniable beauty of these watches, they deliver the wearer the philosophical satisfaction of experiencing the expression of time in all its variety. There is the high-speed fractionof- a-second of the chronograph, the regular diurnal cycle of 24 hours, the slower pace of calendrical change measured in months and years, and finally the representation of the moon, which is suggestive of eternity.