Patek Philippe
Patek Philippe holds 918 watches in this library, 89 per cent of them in gold or platinum. It is the most complicated catalogue here: 19 per cent carry a perpetual calendar, 19 per cent a chronograph and 11 per cent a minute repeater.
Collections
Golden Ellipse
Cubitus
Complications
Complications is Patek Philippe's tier between the Calatrava and the Grand Complications.
Grand Complications
Grand Complications is Patek Philippe's name for its perpetual calendars, minute repeaters, split-seconds chronographs, tourbillons and celestial watches.
Calatrava
The Calatrava is Patek Philippe's round dress watch, named for the cross the company adopted as its emblem in 1887 and defined by the ref 96 of 1932.
Pocket Watches
Patek Philippe still makes pocket watches, and this collection holds 53 of them.
Nautilus
The Nautilus is the 1976 Gérald Genta sports watch with a porthole case: a rounded octagonal bezel held by two hinge-like ears and an integrated bracelet.
Twenty~4
The Twenty~4 is Patek Philippe's ladies' collection, launched in 1999 as a rectangular bracelet watch and extended in 2018 with a round 36 mm automatic.
Aquanaut
The Aquanaut is Patek Philippe's rubber-strap sports watch, introduced in 1997.
Gondolo
The Gondolo is Patek Philippe's collection of shaped cases, rectangular, tonneau and cushion.
About Patek Philippe
Antoni Patek and Franciszek Czapek began making watches in Geneva in 1839; Adrien Philippe, inventor of keyless winding, joined in 1845 and the firm took its present name in 1851. The Stern family has owned it since 1932, the year of the Calatrava reference 96, and every generation has added a first: the perpetual calendar wristwatch of 1925, the serially made perpetual calendar chronograph of 1941, the annual calendar of 1996, which needs correcting once a year instead of five times. Since 2009 the watches have carried the Patek Philippe Seal, the maison's own standard for finishing, rate and service, in place of the Hallmark of Geneva.
The catalogue here follows those lines. The Grand Complications, 270 watches, hold the perpetual calendars, repeaters and split-seconds chronographs; the Complications, 176, hold the annual calendars, world timers and travel times; the Calatrava, 193, is the round dress watch. Gérald Genta's Nautilus of 1976, the porthole-shaped steel sports watch, is 95, and the Aquanaut of 1997 that followed it 41; the Twenty~4 of 1999, the Gondolo, the Golden Ellipse of 1968 and 53 pocket watches complete the list.
The 240, the micro-rotor automatic of 1977 that lets a Patek stay under 8 mm, is the most common caliber here at 150 watches, with its world-time and perpetual versions 240 HU and 240 Q beside it; the 240 piece tells its story. The 324 S C is the full-rotor automatic, the Lemania-based CH 27-70 Q survives in 34 perpetual calendar chronographs, which the Lemania piece explains, and the in-house CH 29-535 PS replaced it. Fifty-nine per cent of the watches are automatic, 35 per cent hand-wound and 6 per cent quartz, the last in the Twenty~4.
The median case is 38.5 mm, 37 mm the most common size, and 69 per cent have a display back. Water resistance is a dress rating, a median of 30 m, with only the Nautilus and Aquanaut rated to 120 m. Twenty-six per cent of the watches here are limited editions and 30 per cent of the scored ones carry a rarity score of 8 or above, the highest share of any brand in the library.