Month: July 2021

There are layers of complexity. The simplest might be a simple calendar. You put the numbers 1 to 31 on a disc, stick it under the dial, add a couple of gears, make it move forward one increment per day, and you’ve got it. Nonetheless, it’s hard to mention replica Patek Philippe today without conjuring up some blue dial cliché on Instagram. What has given Patek Philippe its place in history and has remained there is its mastery of the entire repertoire of high-end and complex watchmaking. This means mastering not only all the decorative watchmaking techniques but also a profound institutional knowledge of how to handle the complexities of watchmaking.
The “Rare Crafts” exhibition for 2021 runs from June 16th to 26th in Geneva. Under normal circumstances, we would be there to cover it in person, but we’re not quite there yet in terms of travel. We can tell you, however, that Patek Philippe has used the opportunity to introduce some new replica watches at the show, including a new version of the Tourbillon of the Sky Moon, and it has also introduced three new minute repeaters…
This is very much a modern watch, albeit filtered through the more decorative lines that Patek Philippe has tended to steer in recent years in terms of case design. But if you’re interested in mechanics, you can’t do much better. The back of the watch gives you a good view of the minute repeater action, but what you see on the dial side is something you don’t normally see.
When this fake watch was introduced in 2016, it had a platinum case with a black enamel dial. The new version is a white gold case with a blue enamel dial. I’m a big fan of platinum minute repeaters because platinum is generally a very tough material to use for chiming complications. In white gold, with a blue enamel dial, it’s classic Geneva watchmaking with the emphasis on classic – discrete, quiet beauty that you don’t look at more than once unless you already know what you’re looking at.
Flinqué is an enameling technique in which translucent enamel is covered with guilloché or a machine-turned dial. Guilloché is more often found now than it was ten or fifteen years ago – Breguet, for example, is famous for its guilloché dials. It is an interesting craft technique because it requires both a very specific type of machine tool and considerable manual skills. The machine that did the guilloche was called a rose machine and was not made at all for decades; until today, some of the machines used for high-end replica watches are antique, with decades of use and very careful maintenance.
It is great to see this movement and this model return in any way. It’s not the most obvious technical piece from Patek Philippe at the Geneva Rare Crafts Show, but of all the watches they announced, it’s very close to the one I’d most like to have in my collection.