Workmanship as Art

TWO NEW WATCHES FROM PATEK PHILIPPE MAKE FUNCTION ITSELF AN AESTHETIC DELIGHT. By Christen Fisher

Do we sufficiently value a master photographer in our quick-snap smartphone culture? Even as the more thoughtful among us admire professional photography, we aren’t necessarily conscious of the technical skill and knowledge of light, space, time, geometry, physics, aesthetics and art history that inform a photographer’s virtuosity. Such is the case with many of the world’s art forms—we appreciate the beauty of a piece, but rarely the technical and functional skills painstakingly deployed in its creation. Yet there’s one great exception: fine Swiss watchmaking.

It’s one art form that wears its technical prowess on its sleeve—and yours. It marries the beauty of a wearable piece of art with beauty of another kind: the technical perfection of a highly functional tool. And no one does this better than Patek Philippe, as evidenced this year by the brand’s launch of Reference 5226G-001 Calatrava and Reference 5326G-001 Annual Calendar Travel Time.

An epic lesson in form, the Reference 5226G is housed in a 40-millimeter, white-gold pure round Calatrava case, a hallmark of the collection since 1932, with a slightly chamfered bezel and polished inclined lugs. Its middle is adorned with a Clous de Paris hobnail guillochéd pattern. To allow the guillochéd motif to continue around the entire caseband, Patek designers devised a distinctive case construction in which the lugs are an integral part of the case back.

The watch’s vintage-style dial was crafted by Cadrans Flückiger in Saint-Imier, a dial specialist belonging to Patek since 2004. The textured, charcoal-gray dial is reminiscent of the housing of old photo cameras and features a black gradient rim and gold applied numerals with a beige luminescent coating, the first time the brand has used this particular color.

The self-winding caliber 26-330 S C movement powers the hours, minutes, central seconds, aperture-type date and stopseconds mechanism and has a reserve of 35 to 45 hours. Waterproof to 30 meters, this piece is presented with two interchangeable straps: beige calfskin with a nubuck finish and black calfskin with an embossed fabric motif and beige topstitching, both with a prong buckle. Elegant in every respect, the Reference 5226 Calatrava is truly a work of art. The extraordinary beauty of the 5226 is echoed in the design of its 41-millimeter sister watch, the Reference 5326 Annual Calendar Travel Time. Boasting the same elegant case design, vintage-style anthracite dial and calfskin strap choices, the 5326 also brings together for the first time two complications: the Annual Calendar and the Travel Time dual-zone display system. This feat of engineering required an entirely new movement, caliber 31-260 PS QA LU FUS 24H, and the filing of eight patent applications.

Besides being able to accommodate both mechanisms in the same case, the functions also had to interact, so that the displayed date corresponded to local time, and adjust whenever the time zone was corrected. To address this, Patek engineers redesigned the Travel Time function to control the Annual Calendar function with the local-time hour-wheel driving the calendar, though its basic principles remain. It features two hour hands from the center—a solid hand for local time and a pierced hand for home time—but the two common time zone pushers, which are usually located in the left-hand case flank, have now been replaced with a winding-stem setting mechanism that has three positions. The user pulls the crown to the middle position and turns it clockwise or counterclockwise to adjust the local time hour hand in one-hour increments in either direction without affecting the rate of the movement. Setting the time in the home time-zone and utilizing the stop-seconds mechanism are accomplished with the crown in the outermost position.

The Annual Calendar function also had to be modified to ensure that the date matched the respective local time. In a conventional Annual Calendar, the display advance happens around midnight and takes 90 minutes to complete. If a user were to adjust the time zone during that 90-minute window, a date misalignment could occur. To address this, Patek engineers shortened the display advance of the Annual Calendar discs from 90 to 18 minutes. Additionally, the 5326 has apertures for day, date, month and home and local time as well as day/night indicators and moon phase and small seconds dials. With a power reserve of 38–48 hours, the 5326 proves to be a technical achievement rivaled only by the aesthetic virtuosity of the 5226.

This season, Patek Philippe introduces the latest addition to the Calatrava Collection Ref. 5226G. Housed in a 40-millimeter, white-gold pure round Calatrava case with a slightly chamfered bezel and polished inclined lugs, this new model is driven by self-winding Caliber 26-330 S C powering the hours, minutes, central seconds, aperture-type date and stop-seconds mechanism. Boasting the same elegant case design, vintage-style anthracite dial and calfskin strap choices (in beige or black), the Ref. 5326G Annual Calendar Travel Time also brings together for the first time two complications: the Annual Calendar and the Travel Time dual-zone display system.