Articles' list >>> Patek Philippe’s Grandes Complications Collection
The Packard’s Collection
Patek Philippe is best known within haute horology world for producing super complicated watches, particularly in astronomic complications. In the beginning of the 20th century, between 1900 and 1927, Patek Philippe created 13 highly complicated pocket watches by request of one of its wealthy guardians, James Ward Packard, the man behind the luxury automobiles bearing his name. Some of these timepieces represent grandes complications of special note, featuring ten to sixteen complications in each. The Packard’s collection comprised a perpetual calendar with phases and age of the moon, indication of sunrise and sunset, and a celestial chart showing the constellations of stars in the sky over Packard's home in Ohio.
James Ward Packard is well-known for many watch enthusiasts as one of the world’s leading collectors of fine timepieces. When Packard passed away, his great collection was given to the Horological Institute of America, later renamed into the American Watchmakers-Clockmakers Institute (AWCI).
Not just the simpler minute repeaters used in most grandes complications, two pieces from the Packard's collection are complicated clock watches. The first watch produced in 1916 had a 3-gong chiming Grande et Petite Sonnerie with minute repeater, perpetual calendar with moon phase and backward date indicator, power reserve indications for the strike and timekeeping trains, and a split-seconds chronograph.
The Most Complicated and Expensive Watch
The most complicated Patek Philippe’s pocket watch ever produced became the most expensive watch ever sold when it was purchased for $11 million by the Sotheby auction house in 1999.
The gold pocket watch appeared as the result of a long-standing competition between two passionate collectors Henry Graves Jr. and James Ward Packard that competed with one another for owning a timepiece with the greatest number of complications.
In an attempt to knock off spots the entire Packard collection, manufacturer Henry Graves Jr. asked Patek Philippe to produce the most complicated watch ever created. In 1928, Patek Philippe's craftsmen were engaged in the research and worked hard on the design for five years, producing the Graves Supercomplication, a unique watch featuring 24 complications.
The watch possessed a different chorological function for each hour of the day and included a chart of the nighttime sky over Graves' home in New York.
After the Graves’s death in 1953, his legatees sold the watch to the Time Museum in Rockford, Ill. When the museum closed, the watch joined 80 other pieces from the collection to be sold at Sotheby's. All together, they brought $28 million. The Graves watch was preliminarily estimated to be worth from $3 to $5 million, but was sold for $11,003,500 to an anonymous collector.
The Caliber '89 Coach Watch
The Graves Supercomplication represented the best of Patek Philippe's creations in the field of grandes complications until the celebration of the Company’s 150th Anniversary in 1989, when it reached an unforeseen success in developing both coach watch and wristwatch complications. The Caliber '89 coach watch with 33 complications and 1,728 unique parts took five years of research and four of manufacture. The unique creation comprises such complications as the date of Easter, sidereal time and a celestial chart with 2,800 stars. It became the most complicated watch ever produced in the limited number of just four pieces available for sale: in gold, rose gold, white gold, and platinum, with a gold prototype destined for Patek Philippe's museum.
Produced consentaneously with the greatest Caliber '89, was a revived classical form of the grandes complications wristwatch, a minute repeater with perpetual calendar. The new movement, caliber R 27 Q became the most popular repeater movement in present-day haute horlogerie, in both its simpler version R 27 PS (without calendar) and in its grandes complications versions.
Some More Grandes Complications
In 1995 Patek Philippe came up with the new caliber RTO 27 QR supplied with perpetual calendar and retrograde date that became the most complex wristwatch movement in production, the treasure of the company’s "Grand Complications" collection.
In 1999 Patek Philippe declared the development of a new complicated hunter pocket watches in limited numbers. Being a divine descendent of pocket watches from the Packard collection, it was created closer to the Graves Supercomplication, featuring 21 complications.
This "Star Caliber 2000" is a dedicated work in the Company’s signature astronomic complications, with progress also made with its five-gong striking complications. The Star Caliber 2000's prototype is also reserved for the Patek Philippe Museum.
In 2001 Patek Philippe presented the "Sky Moon Tourbillon". This double-faced wristwatch, the pinnacle of Patek Philippe’s work in astronomic wristwatches, takes the brand’s minute repeater tourbillion caliber, RTO 27, together with a perpetual calendar on one side, and a star-chart with lunar orbit and phase on the other, using a module adapted from the Star Caliber 2000.
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