Patek Philippe Rare Handcrafts 2025

The “Rare Handcrafts 2025” collection (a total of 78 pieces, comprising 23 dome table clocks and small dome table clocks, 1 desk clock, 10 pocket watches and 44 Calatrava and Golden Ellipse wristwatches) once again calls into play a vast range of outstanding skills, including Grand Feu cloisonné enamel, miniature painting on enamel, grisaille enamel, flinqué enamel, paillonné enamel, Fauré enamel, hand engraving, hand-executed guilloché work and gemsetting), raised to new heights of excellence. Patek Philippe also showcases several techniques that are innovating in horology, such as Longwy enamel on faience and wood micromarquetry – the latter gracing a dome table clock for the first time. And not forgetting the growing number of what are known as “mixed techniques” pieces, uniting, for example, cloisonné enamel and paillonné enamel, or miniature painting on enamel and hand engraving.

As regards themes, the “Rare Handcrafts 2025” collection is again extraordinarily rich in creativity, with a broad palette of subjects embracing the cultures and landscapes of every continent.

These 78 pieces with their ever-more original and astonishing decorations are presented to great effect in an elegant, specially devised decor divided into three areas.

The salon facing the rue du Rhône honors legendary examples of human endeavor (painting, music, literature, architecture, traditions, sports), by varying and combining techniques with complete freedom.

A large display case groups pieces arising from highly diverse sources of inspiration. The dome table clock 20191M-001 “Skiing in Days Gone By” in cloisonné enamel enriched with miniature painting on enamel brings back a golden age of alpine tourism and Swiss graphic design. Reference 21000M-001 “Geneva Harbor”, the first dome table clock to be adorned with wood marquetry, combines 2,191 tiny veneer parts, representing 41 species of wood of different colors, textures and veining. The dial of Minute Repeater wristwatch 5278/500G-001 “Horse” is adorned with a hand-engraved applied ornament in white gold inspired by the “Chunar horses” of Indian origin, while the bezel and prong buckle are hand engraved with a motif recalling a horse’s braided mane. Pocket watch 984/101J-001 “Eagle and Wolf” inspired by early-twentieth-century English book illustrations of animals and nature combines hand engraving and miniature painting on enamel on its two covers. After “Geneva in Older Times” in 2024, three Golden Ellipse wristwatches depicting “The London of Yesteryear” reinterpret, in miniature painting on enamel, old postcards in sepia tones. Watchmaking itself is the theme on the Golden Ellipse wristwatch 5738/50G-033 “Horological Gear Trains”, with its dial in cloisonné enamel and grisaille enamel au blanc de Limoges paying homage to the famous caliber 240 ultra-thin self-winding movement. In another nod to the manufacture’s remarkable heritage, the dome table clock Reference 20187M-001 “The Patek Waltz” in cloisonné and paillonné enamel embellished with hand engraving draws inspiration from the score of a piece of music composed in 1907 in honor of the faithful Brazilian retail firm of Gondolo & Labouriau.

A group of three pocket watches in miniature painting on enamel illustrates all the difficulty of interpreting masterpieces in the confined space of a round watch dial and all Patek Philippe’s prowess in this respect –whether the subject be a work by the Genevan painter Louis Baudit (1870–1960) “Lake Geneva Barque”, on Reference 992/187G-001; a seventeenth-century Dutch still life “Flowers and Insects”, on Reference 992/188G-001; or a canvas by the famous painter Canaletto (1697–1768), on Reference 992/160G-001 “Rialto Bridge”, a jewel of mixed techniques with the border of the case back, the bezel and the bow hand engraved with a floral frieze, by the technique of line engraving.

Two authors of major historical importance represent literature: Jules Verne and Cervantes. The dome table clock 20171M-001 “Nautilus” in cloisonné enamel and grisaille enamel enriched with miniature painting on enamel drew inspiration from the famous adventure novel “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas”. The French author also occupies the place of honor on three Calatrava wristwatches in cloisonné enamel illustrating scenes from other novels, such as Reference 5086R-001 “Five Weeks in a Balloon”, with the famous episode of the Victoria being towed by an elephant, and a new bezel decoration recalling the author’s technological universe. Meanwhile, the Spanish author Cervantes is honored on two pocket watches portraying Don Quixote charging at windmills, in two different color palettes, one representing daytime, the other, night.

The “Rare Handcrafts 2025” collection pays a splendid tribute to the ancestral art of wine-growing, with six works featuring highly refined decorations. The Calatrava “Clous de Paris” models 5177G-050 & 5177G-051 “Vineyards and Chateaux” highlight the prestige of the great French wine-growing estates of Burgundy and the Bordeaux region. The Calatravas 5077/100J-001, 5077/100R-066 & 5177G-052 “Vines and Wines” celebrate the infinite shades and nuances of color found in white, rosé and red wines, on dials in flinqué enamel with hand-engraved sapphire crystals, a new form of decoration in our Rare Handcrafts collections. The Golden Ellipse 5738/50G032 “Dézaley Chemin de fer” unites cloisonné enamel, miniature painting on enamel and grisaille enamel au blanc de Limoges in a decor inspired by a wine label from Lavaux, in Switzerland.

Music and other entertainments also feature, on three dome table clocks and a pocket watch celebrating swing and jazz, as well as vintage funfairs and Central Park in New York.

This vast display of timepieces is completed by the entirely new desk clock with perpetual calendar and weekly calendar 27000M-001, joining the current collection this spring, endowed with a cabinet in 925 sterling silver enriched with panels in green Grand Feu flinqué enamel with a swirling guilloché motif.