A House Celebrates Its Own Birthday
In 1839, in Geneva, two immigrants opened a workshop: Antoine Norbert de Patek and the watchmaker François Czapek. A few years later they were joined by a genius, Adrien Philippe, inventor of the keyless winding stem, and the age of winding a watch with a separate key came to an end. That small workshop grew into the most respected watch house in the world, and adopted a philosophy so singular that its own advertising declares it: you never actually own a Patek Philippe, you merely look after it for the next generation.
A full one hundred and seventy-five years passed. In 2014 the house turned one hundred and seventy-five. Another brand would have thrown a grand gala, released a limited series and been done with it. Patek Philippe instead set to work quietly, on a secret project that would take years, and created the most complicated wristwatch in its history as a birthday gift to itself and to the art of watchmaking. Its name meant the master of masters: the Grandmaster Chime. The 6300GR-001 before you is that legend, clothed in rose and white gold.
The Watch With Two Faces
The first thing you notice when you take this watch in hand is that it has two faces. The case is suspended in its own carriage like a cradle, and can be turned a full one hundred and eighty degrees to reveal the other side. One face is the face of time: a brown dial hand-guilloched with a hobnail pattern, rose gold Breguet numerals, a moon phase, a second time zone, a day and night indicator, and two separate power-reserve hands. The small bell symbol at upper right whispers to you whether the striking mechanism is armed.
Turn the case over and an entirely different world opens: the face of the calendar. Here lives an instantaneous perpetual calendar. Day, date, month, leap year, and even a four-digit year window reading the full year, such as 2023. A patented reversing mechanism carries you between the two faces, and a position indicator tells you which side is up, because among this many functions it is all too easy to lose your bearings. At forty-seven point seven millimetres the case is large, but noble.
The Language of Bells
But the soul of this watch is sound. The grande sonnerie and petite sonnerie, the great and small strike, bring a cathedral belfry to your wrist. In grande sonnerie mode the watch strikes the passing hours and quarters of its own accord, every quarter, without you doing a thing. The petite sonnerie sounds only the full hours and stays silent in between. And whenever you wish, a push of a slide engages the minute repeater, which strikes the hours, quarters and minutes one by one on three separate gongs to tell you the time out loud.
To make steel sing is the hardest task in watchmaking. The timbre of a gong changes with a difference as small as a thousandth of its thickness; each gong is tuned by hand and ear. An unseen governor tames the sound so its rhythm never runs away. For a wristwatch to chime in so small a volume, and with a clean, full tone, is exactly the point where engineering and art meet.
Two World Firsts
This watch carries twenty complications, and five of them concern sound. But two of those five had never existed anywhere in the world before, and are world firsts patented by Patek Philippe. The first is an alarm that wakes you not with a buzz but with a melody: when your set alarm time arrives, the watch strikes that very time on its repeater gongs. In other words, your alarm does not ring, it tells you the time.
The second is more astonishing still: the date repeater. Press a slide and the watch announces the date of the current day out loud, in the language of bells. Imagine it: not in your pocket but on your wrist, a machine that will tell you today's date even with your eyes closed. This is one hundred and eighty years of accumulated mastery daring to speak the last unspoken word about sound.
1,366 Parts, 100,000 Hours
All of this magic is governed by a hand-wound movement bearing the name GS AL 36-750 QIS FUS IRM. Every letter of that name names a talent: GS the grande sonnerie, AL the alarm, QIS the instantaneous perpetual calendar, FUS the second time zone, IRM the power-reserve indicator. This movement is made of one thousand three hundred and sixty-six parts and one hundred and eight jewels. Its development took seven years and more than one hundred thousand engineering hours; the design of the reversible case alone took two full years.
Here the unseen is held as sacred as the seen. The edge of every bridge is bevelled by hand and black-polished until, from a certain angle, it appears jet black. The dials are worked by hand in the hobnail guilloche pattern and made of eighteen-carat solid gold plates. The watch is certified by the house's own Patek Philippe Seal, a standard stricter even than the Geneva Seal. And the perpetual calendar is not lazy: at midnight every indication jumps into place all at once, in a small fraction of a second.
Entrusted to the Next Generation
The price of this watch is three million one hundred and seventy-five thousand euros. The Grandmaster Chime first came into the world as the reference 5175, made for the one hundred and seventy-fifth anniversary and produced in only seven examples; it then entered the permanent collection, and here the 6300GR-001 wears it in the warm and cool harmony of rose and white gold.
Sound is the most fleeting thing in the world; it vanishes the instant it is born. Patek Philippe, in answer, built an untouchable house for sound. When you raise your wrist and hear the clear voice of those bells, you are in truth listening to one hundred and eighty years of patience, to a birthday gift a house gave itself, and to a sound you will leave to the generation that comes after you. You do not own it; you merely look after it.