Welcome To Tomorrow Land

Patek Philippe's spirit of inter-generational longevity is beautifully expressed through its perpetual calendar watches

- Alvin Wong

One of Patek Philippe president Thierry Stern’s fondest memory of growing up in the company places him in his father’s office in Rue de Rhonde in the 1970s, playing among old furniture and snooping around drawers until he chanced upon a “secret one” containing the elder Stern’s most precious pocket watches. He recalled that it held six enamel pocket watches, wrapped in red velour that he could still smell. “I could only look, but wasn’t allowed to touch them,” he said. “But it was love at first sight.”

There’s just something about old watches that have passed through many hands, which evokes not just memories, but inspires dreams about the future. Surely, a precious timepiece that came before, which demands care and protection, ought to elicit the same feelings from its inheritors? But imagine this – what if the watches didn’t just land in the hands of the recipients as lifeless mechanical artefacts of the past, but as strident tickers still keeping date and time without pause, as they did for decades? We think that even Stern the boy would have been bowled over by this sort of mechanical drama.

Such is the fascination that calendar watches, especially perpetual calendars, conjure. And it is not just that these timepieces function like mini-mechanical processors, with the ability to automatically compute and adjust dates with months containing 28, 30 and 31 days; anticipate leap years; and require only one manual correction after almost 100 years. It is this living and breathing passage of time – and bringing with it emotions and recollections – that make perpetual calendar watches the embodiment of Patek Philippe’s tagline-turned life goal, which encourages stewardship and not mere ownership.

ETERNITY BEFORE SOUND