At the London Rare Handcrafts Exhibition in June 2024, Patek Philippe showcased its extensive range of styles and exquisite techniques.
The Swiss watchmaker’s impressive unveiling took place at the corner of Bond Street and Clifford Street. In its grand London flagship store, the company brought together its most significant Rare Handcrafts collection. The 83 timepieces included 27 dome clocks, 3 table clocks, 10 pocket watches, and 43 wristwatches, each ingeniously decorated in various styles using equally impressive handcrafts.
The styles on display were both diverse and unique. Imagine dome clocks adorned with Art Deco-style Miami Beach landscapes in vibrant pink, green, and orange enamels; micro wood marquetry depicting a chiseled-jawed, bare-chested surfer against crashing waves (pictured below), or a fedora-wearing billiards player focused on his cue tip in a smoke-filled tavern.
Themes ranged from Japanese blue and white koi and dragonflies to the hazy, meandering painted forms of Monet’s Water Lilies. There was even a set of watches depicting 1950s American cars and a dome clock capturing the thrill of the train era, with smoking steel behemoths gliding majestically past New York skyscrapers (see above).
All these characters and scenes find their place in Patek Philippe’s world, alongside more traditional scenes of Swiss lakes, idyllic English gardens, and classical constellations.
Patek Philippe takes pride in keeping traditional crafts alive and invigorating them with new “hybrid techniques,” pushing the craft to new frontiers. Centuries-old crafts include different categories of cloisonné enamel work, bringing vibrant colors and depth of luster to these extraordinary scenes.
Patek Philippe’s artisans, both male and female, are masters of the full range of high-fire enamel techniques. Like paint made from water and colored glass powder, each scene requires several months of multiple high-temperature firings.
The enamels seen in the exhibition include cloisonné, which encases enamel sections within delicate gold borders; champlevé, which places glass powder into hollowed-out cavities in metal; and flinqué, which places gold foil flecks or “paillons” between layers of glass enamel to produce a luminous effect. It’s particularly effective in depicting reflections on glass or shimmering on water.
Grisaille is a decorative method that requires the artist to apply fine white Limoges powder with tiny brushes onto layers of enamel, creating dramatic contrasts and diffused effects. Miniature painting mixes glass powder with oil to create miniature paintings on enamel, then covers the enamel with layers of flux to fix and protect the miniature artwork.
Longwy enamel technique – named after its town of origin in northeastern France – is another unusual skill of painting on faience, creating a crackled surface using circles or black outlines surrounding enamel colors.
In addition to enameling, Patek Philippe also employs intricate metal decoration techniques. Guilloché or engine-turning adds textured metal surfaces around dials, providing undulating light beneath translucent layers of enamel. Hand-engraving is the closest to three-dimensional metal painting.
Artists engrave, mark, and sculpt metal to create realistic scenes that shimmer with light. This technique is often used in conjunction with enamel or other crafts like wood marquetry or guillochage, making each piece a masterpiece of handcraftsmanship.
Marquetry has only recently been used in watches, previously limited to furniture or small wooden objects. The koi and water lily desk clock (pictured above) recreates a pebble-lined fish pond with two mottled koi swimming beneath lilies, Zen-like in its tranquility.
The scene is composed of 385 different tiny wooden pieces selected from 36 different types of wood for their varying colors and grains. The effect is spectacular, so skillfully made that it’s hard to guess what material created the pleasing scene of soft tones.
The 83 timepieces on display are either unique or limited editions of up to 10 pieces, each destined for a collector. Collectors are allocated pieces by local Patek Philippe retailers, making the exhibition a rare opportunity to see these masterpieces before they disappear into private collections. In 2022, the first Rare Handcrafts exhibition left Geneva for Paris, and now, it has come to London for the first time.
Patek Philippe is committed to preserving these rare skills, a passion instilled in the family stemming from a commitment made by Henri Stern, grandfather of the current CEO Thierry Stern. As Henri Stern pointed out, maintaining the tradition of rare handcrafts is not a profitable decision. “This is not what we are looking for at Patek Philippe.
We are a family business that loves beautiful things, and this is what we like to do. It’s not business, it’s passion. Regrettably, we have to sell them, but I wish I could keep them in our museum. We need creativity, but we also need craftsmen. At Patek Philippe, we are willing to preserve and promote these rare handcrafts for generations. I am already teaching my son about this world so that it will continue to grow.”
Timeless Artistry Unveiled: Patek Philippe’s 2024 London Rare Handcrafts Exhibition Dazzles with Exquisite Masterpieces
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