While Patek Philippe sports models like the Nautilus dominate its sales and receive the most media attention, at its core Patek Philippe is a master of creating amazing complications. Patek Philippe recently made it clear that it’s much more than just another name in stainless steel sports watches. It continues its legacy of creating classic, sophisticated, innovative dress watches with remarkable technology. With the discontinuation of the Nautilus 5711, Patek Philippe President Thierry Stern has made it known that Patek is anything but a “mono-brand.” While this popular watch will continue to sell well, Patek invites enthusiasts to discover all the brand’s collections. It’s the perfect opportunity to take a look at all of Patek Philippe’s amazing complications.
The Annual Calendar and Its Precursor
Patek Philippe’s catalog features just about every complication available in the horological world, with some of its watches featuring as many as twenty of them in one timepiece. Along with ultra-complex masterpieces, the one single complication associated the most with Patek Philippe is of course the annual calendar.
In terms of mechanical complexity, the annual calendar is situated between a simple date complication and the perpetual calendar, the latter being one of the grand complications of watchmaking. An annual or perpetual calendar is a feature that requires the wearer to re-set the date on only the rarest of occasions, while a simple date complication cannot “recognize” how many days the current month has, which means that it must be adjusted at the end of any month with fewer than 31 days, even if it remains wound and continues to run. A perpetual calendar complication mechanically takes into account not only the different lengths of the months, but also leap years, for decades to come.
Perpetual calendar mechanics have been around for centuries, with none other than Patek Philippe releasing the very first perpetual calendar in a wristwatch in 1925. This came about when Patek took the movement of a ladies’ pendant watch from 1898 and gave it new life for a wristwatch, which was then acquired by an American collector.
Perpetual calendars have since become a mainstay of the Geneva-based watch manufacturer’s catalog. They are among the so-called “grand complications” of watchmaking, which include tourbillons and minute repeaters, and whose complexity makes them very expensive, even by Patek Philippe standards.
The mechanical complexity and price differences between simple date complications and perpetual calendar complications meant that watchmaking needed something to bridge the gap. The solution was the annual calendar, which Patek Philippe presented for the first time in 1996.
As sensible and modern as its intelligent design, the annual calendar movement, unlike the perpetual calendar, does not have geometrically complex cams. Its backstory is also interesting: it was created by Patek Philippe in the 1990s in collaboration with a Swiss academic institute of mechanics, and its design was patented in 1994.
Today, these time-tested mechanisms can be found in countless Patek Philippe timepieces, including stylish classics, Nautilus editions, rare Advanced Research models, and annual calendar flyback chronographs.
Although other watchmakers have also been creating annual calendar timepieces for years, Patek Philippe remains a trailblazer when it comes to this technology, and is the brand most associated with this complication.
Minute Repeater
Watches with chimes, especially minute repeaters that can be set to harmoniously sound the current time at the press of a button, have been a fixture at Patek Philippe since its beginnings. Just five months after the company was founded, Patek produced its first repeater, a quarter-repeater that used one of its two gongs for the last full hour and the other for each full quarter-hour. Except for a brief discontinuation in the 1960s and 70s (a short period of time at Patek Philippe, considering the brand’s longevity), repeater watches continue to be a part of the Patek collection, with a special focus on minute repeaters.
A minute repeater is the logical progression of a quarter repeater that uses two gongs. The hours are usually struck by the lower gong, the quarter-hours by a quick strike of both gongs, and the minutes by the higher toned gong.
Patek Philippe started using its own in-house minute repeater calibers in 1989. Prior to that, they used movements from other world renown watchmakers.
One great milestone in the history of wristwatch minute repeaters was without question the premiere of the Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime, created to commemorate the 175th anniversary of the company in 2014. This is the most complex wristwatch Patek has ever produced, and houses a reversible case with two independent dials and 20 complications, including a grande and petite sonnerie (chiming mechanisms that strike the time without any involvement required by the wearer), and, of course, a minute repeater.
The Stern family makes a point of emphasizing the expertise required for repeater technology, especially in light of the difficulty of creating and adjusting these highly complex mechanisms, something even more complex than, say, tourbillon technology. And while today’s tourbillons can be produced or sourced at prices around $5,000 (some producers in Asia can even make them for less than $1,000), this will literally never be the case for minute repeaters.
Not to mention the fact that Thierry Stern is reported to personally inspect the chiming of every single repeater watch prior to delivery. Talk about mystique and exclusivity! It’s just another indication of the perfection Patek Philippe strives for with this masterful complication.
The most innovative minute repeater timepiece in the Patek repertoire may very well be the reference 1938P-001, with a portrait of honorary Patek Philippe president Philippe Stern on its dial. This timepiece has a 12-hour alarm feature that shares gongs with the minute repeater.
World Time Watches
World time watches enjoy a long heritage at Patek Philippe. They display not just one or two additional time zones on the planet, but all of them at once. This complication, relatively simple compared to the other movements produced by the Geneva watchmaker, allows Patek to create eye-catching timepieces with spectacular, elaborate guilloché and enamel dials.
Although Patek Philippe did not invent the world time complication, it is certainly one of the first brands that comes to mind when you think of it, especially when you see the wide range of Patek World Time designs. They contrast sharply with the understated style of the Nautilus collection and the minimalist elegance of the Calatrava timepieces.
Among Patek’s best-known World Time watches are the cloisonné enamel world map models, first introduced in 2008 with the reference 5131, followed by the reference 5231 in 2019. The reference 5531 also has an enamel dial depicting a scene from Lake Geneva, and its slider, neatly tucked away at the 9 o’clock position, lets you know that it’s also a minute repeater. Other Patek World Time watches with guilloché dials are the references 7130 and 5930. These beautiful dials and World Time features, as hard as it may be to believe, could very well have their show stolen by the remarkable flyback chronograph complications you’ll find on the 5930 and 5935.
The latest edition to the World Time collection was presented at Watches and Wonders 2024. Originally a limited release launched as part of the Patek Philippe “Grand Art” 2023 exhibit in Tokyo, it is now part of the regular Patek catalog, wowing with its veritable technical innovations. It’s powered by the caliber 240 HU C, an upgrade of the 240 HU movement, the “standard” World Time caliber. The 240 HU C now has a date feature that’s synchronized with its world time mechanics. Regardless of whether you’re advancing the date or setting it back, the skinny, inconspicuous hand will show the current date of the city sitting at the 12 o’clock position on the dial. This is made possible by a remarkable central differential system patented in 2014. Be sure to check out the Patek Philippe website, which features a 3D animation video showing this caliber at work in greater detail.
These three complications are of course only a small selection of what Patek Philippe has to offer. You could easily compile a list of the best 10 or even 20 complications in the storied Patek Philippe history. The three we saw today however are probably the best-known in its catalog. And who knows? There may be another article or two still to come presenting even more of the amazing, complex creations from the house of Patek Philippe.
