At the Patek Philippe Art of Watches Exhibition at Cipriani in New York, Swiss watch manufacturer introduced several watches in the range of half million dollars. One of them is Patek Philippe Ref. 5531R World Time Minute Repeater, New York 2017 Special Edition watch. An amazing new grand complication, and a world’s first, the watch melodiously chimes the time for any location in the world. If for instance, your home city is New York but you have changed the reference city to Paris, the 5531R will chime Paris rather than New York time.
Patek Philippe Ref. 5531R World Time Minute Repeater New York 2017 Special Edition
Another equally interesting alteration to the traditional mechanism, is an additional system that ensures that at the end of each hour, the watch will chime the time that the hands show at the end of the strike. To illustrate, if you activate the strike at 5:59:50, by the time the strike ends it will be 6:00. The watch is designed so that instead of hearing five hour strikes, three quarter strikes, and 14 minute strikes as would be the case in a normal repeater, you instead hear six hour strikes only, which end exactly as the hands reach 6:00.
Additional safety features are built into the watch as well – for example when the strike is activated, the world time mechanism is blocked preventing the damage that might occur should the owner attempt to adjust the world time mechanism during chiming.
Aesthetically the watch features 18-karat gold dial that is also fitted with a German silver dial with the city disk and 24-hour disk. The two versions captivate us with the exceptional cloisonné enamel depiction of the skyline of New York City. “New York By Day” features bright sunlit colors, while “New York By Night” offers dazzling city lights against the dark night sky to underscore the beauty of the city that never sleeps. Each dial takes a single enamel artist approximately two weeks of work to create.
The all-new grand complication watch retails for $561,341 and is limited to just five pieces of each version.
Patek Philippe Ref. 5531R World Time Minute Repeater New York 2017 Special Edition
