Patek Philippe
Patek Philippe is one of the last independent family-owned Genevan manufacturers of timepieces. Antoni Patek (1812 – 1877) was born in Poland and moved to France in 1832. He moved back to Switzerland and began buying and selling pocket watches. Then in 1839 he formed a partnership with watchmaker Franciszek Czapek. Together they founded Patek, Czapek & Co. At this time they produced around two hundred watches a year. First they started as a made to order shop. All of those pieces were decorated with themes inspired by Polish history and culture. Czapek left the company a few years later and was replaced by the French watchmaker Jean Adrien Philippe (1815 – 1894). Philippe was credited for inventing the key-less winding mechanism. The company was, at the time, known as Patek & Co. until 1851 when they became Patek Philippe & Co. This is when they started creating high quality pieces featuring the newest innovations. Patek and Philippe traveled to London’s Great Exhibition and presented Queen Victoria which started a trend of pieces that would eventually be sold to the Queen. In 1853 they moved to 41 rue du Rhône their destination. They started with two floors of the building and added floors until they bought the building in 1891. They made their first wristwatch in 1868. Then two years later their first chronograph. They pioneered the perpetual calendar, split-seconds hand, and minute repeaters. Patek passed away in 1877 and was succeeded by his son-in-law who worked alongside Philippe until 1891 when he let his son Joseph Emile take his shares of the business. In the 1920s and 30s Henry Graves Jr worked with them to create a series of watches including the most famous Patek Philippe the Supercomplication. With their 150th anniversary in 1989 they created the "Calibre 89" which contained more complications than any other watch at 33 complications. Today the company is owned and run by the fourth generation of the Stern family who first became shareholders in 1932.
