NEWS: Patek Philippe celebrate 175 years with the Grandmaster Chime (Ref. 5175)

Felix Scholz

 

2014 marks the 175th birthday of Patek Philippe, and the buzz around the anniversary has recently reached a fever pitch.

You see, Patek Philippe holds a very special place in the pantheon of horology – widely regarded as the greatest of the Swiss houses, Patek can claim to have made many of the most complicated, the most expensive, the most prestigious and most coveted watches in the world.

So Patek lovers (who, broadly speaking are pretty much the same as most other watch lovers, but with a much greater disposable income) were looking forward to the Stern family (who have been looking after the Maison for the last four generations) announcing some special, 175th birthday timepieces. And they have not disappointed – announcing a swathe of special, limited and very coveted watches.

But prince among these timepieces is the Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime (Ref. 5175). From inception to finished product, Patek logged over 100,000 hours on this watch. It’s a labour of love, and a demonstration of the brands ability to do what they do best – super complicated, super impressive statement watches.

The Grandmaster Chime does it all. The manually wound movement displays, and chimes the time, it chimes the date, indicates power reserve for the timekeeping functions and the strikework functions, it has an alarm, it displays a second timezone (with day/night indicator), it has two date displays, with one being a full perpetual calendar. It also has a moonphase indicator and a 24 hour subdial. Oh and it’s also a grand sonnerie, petite sonnerie and minute repeater (which basically means that the watch can strike the hours, quarter hours and minutes – to save you the trouble of looking at the dial). See below for the full list of complications.

To cram all this complication Patek made a richly engraved, 47.4mm case with two faces, which fully rotates, and is crammed with 1,366 parts. The Grandmaster Chime is less of a timepiece and more of a statement piece. And the statement is that Patek have, for the last 175 years been the masters of high end, super complicated timepieces, and they still are.

Seven of these remarkable watches will be produced – six will go to long standing collectors, and the seventh will reside in the Patek Philippe Museum. And visiting the museum is likely the only way you’ll get to see this exercise in horological mastery that Patek call the Grandmaster Chime.