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As heir to the great Genevan tradition, Patek Philippe has always placed particular importance on sharing its love of Haute Horlogerie, notably through exhibitions.
In the years from 1970 to 1980, at the peak of the quartz crisis, the Manufacture played a major role in the strong rebound of the mechanical watch, with travelling exhibitions on themes such as “The Creative Hand” and “The Watch as a Work of Art”. Eleven years ago, the brand went a step further by launching a new concept of grand exhibitions open to the public, offering free admission and encouraging closer acquaintance with its creations, heritage, philosophy and breadth of expertise. In the course of the five editions organized to date, these events have increased in size and scope, welcoming a total of some 165,000 visitors.
After Dubai in 2012, Munich in 2013, London in 2015, New York in 2017 and Singapore in 2019, the watchmaking house chose Tokyo for its sixth grand exhibition. Historically, Japan represents a key market for Patek Philippe – a market of connoisseurs, treasuring rare handcrafts and able to appreciate all the technical excellence and painstaking workmanship contained in a timepiece. Japanese customers, born into a culture that unites respect for tradition with avant-garde spirit, are also perfectly placed to understand the “tradition of innovation” that has guided Patek Philippe since 1839.
From 10 to 25 June, the “Watch Art” Tokyo 2023 exhibition was held at the Sumitomo Sankaku Hiroba, in the heart of the Nishi-Shinjuku district, a lively district just a stone’s throw from Shinjuku Station, Japan’s busiest railway station, which serves about 3.5 million passengers a day. The Sankaku Hiroba (“triangular plaza”) event space, inaugurated in 2020, nestles at the foot of the triangular Shinjuku Sumitomo skyscraper. It takes the form of a vast hall measuring some 3,200 square metres, covered by a massive glass roof rising to 25 metres at its highest point without internal supporting columns. Within this area bathed in natural light, Patek Philippe has created a decor of more than 2,500 square metres – the largest ever conceived for a grand exhibition – conjuring up the streets of Geneva and that city’s lakeside setting, including the famous Flower Clock. The exhibition, divided into several themed areas, invited visitors on a voyage of discovery through the Patek Philippe universe, including all the brand’s most renowned Geneva sites – the historic headquarters on the Rue du Rhône, the Manufacture at Plan-les-Ouates and the Patek Philippe Museum – as if they had magically stepped over the 10,000 kilometres separating Geneva from Tokyo.
The grand exhibition “Watch Art” Tokyo 2023 brought together more than 500 timepieces and objects illustrating a wealth of different types of expertise. In particular, visitors were able to admire the Manufacture’s entire current collection, with its lavish choice of watch families and models, spanning every watchmaking segment from the style icons to the most technically complex mechanisms.
The rare handcrafts (including miniature painting on enamel, cloisonné enamel, hand engraving, micro wood marquetry, hand-executed guilloché work and gemsetting) meticulously preserved by Patek Philippe were also on show, through a splendid array of 40 one-of-a-kind pieces and limited editions (dome clocks, table clocks, pocket watches and wristwatches) inspired by Japanese culture, with its rich artistic repertoire and ancestral skills, as well as live demonstrations by artisans.
The exhibition also presented a selection of some 190 pieces belonging to the Patek Philippe Museum in Geneva and exceptionally allowed to travel for the Tokyo event.
Similarly to its predecessors, the Tokyo 2023 exhibition was accompanied by the launch of several limited editions in every segment of the Patek Philippe collection. Featuring among these six new introductions were two technical timepieces making their global debut: a new self-winding Quadruple Complication and the first World Time watch equipped with a date display synchronised with local time.
June 29, 2023