MAKING ITS MARK: THE PATEK PHILIPPE REF. 5970
Patek Philippe’s Geneva Salon on the Rue du Rhône is one of the great landmarks of the horological world. When I first visited it over 25 years ago, you could still refer to it as the headquarters: above the shop were offices, workshops, and a few items from the museum collection displayed in cabinets in a room that had not made up its mind whether to be a waiting area or a conference space.
This historic site still has the famous Cordoba leather-lined room facing the lake, along with the safe that Patek carried away from the wreckage of Tiffany’s failed attempt to establish a watch factory in Geneva in the 19th century. Otherwise, much has changed in the intervening quarter century: workshops and offices are in Planles-Ouates, the museum has its own building and these days the Rue du Rhône is Patek’s senior salon. It is a place of pilgrimage seldom empty of clients sitting at the well-spaced tables hunched like monks in a medieval scriptorium, over the small ticking masterpieces they are buying.
On the first floor is a panelled wall that turns out to be a sliding door how partial I was to the 5970, I found myself being invited to see a brown-dial version that he had just received – seven years after the model officially ceased production. Although I asked, he refused to send me a picture, saying that this had to be seen in person.
