SINGAPORE: Patek Philippe’s Thierry Stern describes how the Grandmaster Chime took shape.
Thierry Stern, president of Patek Philippe and a fourth-generation Stern running the company, is relaxed in an early morning interview with Options during a recent flying visit to Singapore. Patek Philippe prides itself on being the oldest, independently owned Swiss watch company and Stern was in the Lion City to showcase the Grandmaster Chime, the brand’s special creation for its 175th anniversary.
The Grandmaster Chime is the first double-face wristwatch presented by Patek Philippe that can be worn with either dial facing up. One face focuses on the time and sonnerie; the other side displays an instantaneous perpetual calendar.
“The main idea came from my dad. This is my father’s anniversary. He was the one launching the project. I was not president at the time,” Stern says of the project to create the Grandmaster Chime that started more than eight years ago. His father, Philippe, retired in 2009. “In my mind, it was very clear. The 200th anniversary would be mine, not the 175th.”
More surprisingly, nothing was leaked to the press during the past seven years, when research and trial runs were in full swing. “Nobody talked about it during the seven years. In the last two years, we had maybe 1,000 people knowing about it and I’m very proud to say, you didn’t see anything on the Internet, or you didn’t hear about it,” Stern says.
It all started eight years ago. “We first thought about this eight years ago, and my dad and I decided to have a wristwatch to commemorate the anniversary,” Stern recalls. At the time, the grandmaster chime was missing from the collection. “This is one of the most complicated complications we could do with a watch. The hardest part is always the same, to make it smaller.”
A grandmaster chime in a pocket watch would have been an easier task. But the Sterns wanted a watch that could be worn. “For the client, you don’t just buy a Patek Philippe to look at, you buy it also to wear it,” Stern says.
Originally, Patek Philippe decided to produce a single-face watch and complications that could be added to it. A few months after the start of the project, the company took a different route.
“My father bought a watch, a beautiful perpetual calendar pocket watch for the museum and he called me. ‘Listen, I bought this beautiful watch, a simple face with a calendar on it and I would like to add this type of movement and design on the grandmaster chime,’” Stern recalls. The only way to accede to his father’s wish was to have two faces. “That’s when I [decided] to do a double-face watch. That was a heavy challenge in terms of technical movement and the case.”
The Patek Philippe double face is not like the Reverso by Jaeger- LeCoultre, which has a rectangular dial.
In the end, the company took two years to develop a mechanism that enabled the watch to reverse easily. The wristwatch case has rotating and latching devices in the lugs, allowing it to be turned along the axis from 12 o’clock to 6 o’clock and locked in either of two positions. Patek Philippe immediately patented the invention.
To celebrate an important anniversary, the Sterns decided to have the case engraved. “For an anniversary, we must add the decoration. As a good watchmaker we must also know how to fabricate the cases. And that’s where I started with my wife to design the case, and to engrave it. The hardest part was to find a good engraver who could do it,” Stern says.
Because of the elaborate mechanism and engraving process, Patek Philippe settled on six pieces. Stern calculated that it would take a year to complete two pieces. A seventh piece would be reserved for the Patek Philippe Museum in Geneva. What happened eventual ly was that the parts and the movements were made ahead of schedule, but the engraver could not keep up. Each movement has 1,366 parts and Stern figured that the challenge would be to deliver the parts on time.
“What I did not realise was the engraver couldn’t follow. For the first time in our history, Patek Philippe was faster with [manufacturing] the movement than the case,” he says. Now, the movements are ready and the company is just waiting for the case. “I didn’t want to split the work. I wanted to have the same person engraving the cases so that the design is similar.”
As for the sonnerie, seven years ago, the Sterns had settled on rose-gold for the material because it provides the best sound, owing to the copper content in the metal.
“The only thing we didn’t know was the sound. That would be the most stressful part,” Stern acknowledges. “You have to do it and hope it’s going to ring.”
As it turned out, rose-gold happened to be in vogue. “I wanted to give it everything in terms of the sound. Today, the trend is also for rose-gold, which is nice.”
Planning for the 200th anniversary
Some 95% of Patek Philippe’s watches are made inhouse, including the case. For complicated watches, the screws are also manufactured inhouse, and only the watch strap is outsourced.
Patek Philippe manufactures 55,000 watches a year. Of these, 10,000 are quartz dedicated to the Twenty~4 ladies’ line and the Nautilus, which has some quartz watches for ladies. A further 12,000 watches have manual ly wound movements, and the rest are automatic. The manufacture has 400 full-time licensed watchmakers and 80 staff doing R&D.
Geographically, Europe is the biggest market, accounting for 45% of its sales, followed by the US with 15% to 17%, and the Middle East, 18%. China contributes just 3% to sales, and with the current clampdown on corruption and conspicuous consumption, sales in China are unlikely to rebound.
Patek Philippe was founded in 1839 by by Antoine Norbert de Patek, who was joined by Jean- Adrien Philippe in 1845.Jean and Charles Stern, two brothers who supplied dials to Patek Philippe, acquired the company in 1932. Charles became the chairman and his son, Henri, ran the US distribution arm from New York. Henri named his son (Thierry’s father) Philippe, after one of the founders.
As the younger Stern looks forward to Patek Philipp’s 200th anniversary watch, he drops a hint of the brand’s next project. “I think enamel is very important. It’s not a business for us. If you have a passion like this, you want the finest enamel pieces. The most beautiful ones would take you one year to realise.If I have to do a set or a series for the 200th anniversary, I’d better start now, because I will only have 25 pieces by then.”
This article appeared in the Enterprise of Issue 679 (June 1) of The Edge Singapore.