In celebration of Philippe Stern’s eighty fifth birthday, Swiss luxurious watch producer Patek Philippe has launched a restricted version timepiece with a novel new motion paying tribute to the previous president of the corporate. Philippe Stern served because the president of Patek Philippe from 1993 to 2009 and presently holds the honorary title.
This restricted version contains simply 30 watches and contains a one-of-a-kind chiming mechanism with a minute repeater and alarm operate.
Patek Philippe, based in 1839, is famend for its mastery of chiming watches, whether or not they strike robotically “in passing” (grande sonnerie, petite sonnerie) or upon request (repeaters). In 1989, Philippe Stern, the corporate director on the time, marked a big milestone by reintroducing wrist-worn minute repeaters with the self-winding caliber R 27, the primary motion of its type fully developed and manufactured in-house. Since then, minute repeaters have change into a big a part of Patek Philippe’s product line, with over a dozen fashions providing this Grand Complication, typically mixed with different features equivalent to grande and petite sonnerie, tourbillon, perpetual calendar, chronograph, and World Time, amongst others.
To honour 85 years of Philippe Stern’s dedication to watchmaking, Thierry Stern, the fourth-generation Stern family member who became the president in 2009, determined to create a particular version of 30 watches to honour his father. This distinctive timepiece, referred to as Reference 1938 in reference to the yr of Philippe Stern’s delivery, contains a minute repeater, his favorite complication, mixed with an unique acoustic function: An alarm that chimes the programmed time. This complicated mechanism was one among 5 acoustic features and two patented world firsts unveiled in 2014 (for the manufacture’s a hundred and seventy fifth anniversary) with the Grandmaster Chime Reference 5175, Patek Philippe’s most intricate wristwatch, boasting 20 problems.