Revisiting the golden age of the desk clock, Patek Philippe has reinvented a historic model that belonged to American carmaker James Ward Packard.
Visitors to the Patek Philippe Museum in Geneva can actually see the "Packard" desk clock with a perpetual calendar and eight-day power reserve. Dating back to 1923, the exhibit features a silver case, adorned with winged lions in gilt bronze and applied ornaments in yellow gold.
Patek Philippe drew inspiration from the lavish ornaments for the exterior of the new desk clock (Reference 27000M-001) displaying a weekly as well as a perpetual calendar.
One of two new functions, the weekly calendar involves a rotating aperture indicating the number of the current week on a scale at the periphery of the silvery opaline dial. The other is a "jumping seconds" hand that makes one jump per second in the manner of the old regulators.
Regarding the aesthetics, the sterling silver cabinet is enhanced by vermeil decorative elements and panels of green Grand Feu flinqué enamel over a swirling guilloché pattern.
Two openings for winding and setting the desk clock. photo:
The interpretation boasts a mechanical dashboard, crafted from American walnut wood veneer, beneath a hinged bonnet opening from the right. The control console allows simple adjustments with five push-piece correctors for the week, day, moon phase, month and date of the perpetual calendar.
In the upper left-hand corner, a casing devised with a patented ejection system houses a key for winding and setting the clock via two openings in the upper right-hand corner.
Another opening, located at 6 o'clock beneath the bezel, provides access to the square that stops the seconds, enabling the time to be set to the nearest second.
A grand complication yet user friendly, the desk clock can run for a full month, thanks to the new manually-wound caliber with a 31-day power reserve. Moreover, a precision regulator with a patented constant-force mechanism guarantees a variation in rate of no more than +/– 1 second per 24 hours.
It took seven years to develop the rectangular movement with nine patent applications illustrating Patek Philippe's tradition of innovation.
New caliber with nine patents. photo:
