By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy. We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This story is from an installment of In the Loupe , our weekly insider newsletter about the best of the watch world. Sign up here. In early , Patek Philippe , regarded by watch collectors as the finest watchmaker in the world, opened a state-of-the-art facility in Plan-les-Ouates, the industrial suburb of Geneva that also is home to Rolex, Vacheron Constantin, Piaget, and other luxury watch factories.
The timing of the opening was both unfortunate and fortuitous. In March of that year, the start of the Covid pandemic prompted a series of lockdowns that initially prevented workers from inhabiting the space.
The week after Thanksgiving, I was one of five editors from the U. As we entered the building through revolving doors, someone joked about getting our steps in. The itinerary had us spending an entire day here, crisscrossing gleaming white halls as we visited one production team after another, from the bridge-making department to high horology.
The facility is staffed by some 1, people, most of whom wear white lab coats, and can often be found seated beside microscopes in rooms flooded with natural light. The Patek operation is both artisanal and impressively industrializedβbeginning with the CNC machines that pump, cut, stamp, and form, among other things, cases, bracelets, and the hundreds of minuscule components that comprise even the most basic Patek model.
Our tour began in earnest in the bridge-making department, where we were given the opportunity to attempt the hand-finishing techniques that Patek has perfectedβperlage, anglage, circular graining, and chamfering. My goal, as I understood it, was to add some etched parallel lines to the piece, part of a larger effort to imbue every single component that goes inside a Patek timepiece with the essence of handmade.
