Guarding A Grand Heritage

In an exclusive interview with Prestige, fourthgeneration Patek Philippe chief THIERRY STERN discusses meaningful innovations, business continuity and what surfing's got to do with it.

- LYNETTE KOH

In the horological world, Patek Philippe, along with Rolex, Audemars Piguet and Richard Mille, is one of the Big Four privately owned watchmakers, accounting for nearly 44 per cent of the sales of the Swiss watch industry. Despite the size of its business, however, the 185-year-old Genevan brand remains very much a family-centred enterprise. Just consider its surfer-themed metiers d'art watch, named "Morning on the Beach", displayed at the Watches and Wonders trade fair in Geneva in April.

Featuring a surfer approaching the waves on a Californian beach, the tableau is created using traditional wood marquetry. A hundred tiny veneer pieces and 75 miniature inlays, derived from 23 species of wood of different colours and textures, are assembled to form this evocative image on a watch just 38.6mm in diameter. It is an unusually modern image among the Rare Handcrafts timepieces, which are more often decorated with images of flora and fauna. Perhaps even more unexpectedly, it is inspired by a personal experience of Thierry Stern, Patek Philippe president and fourth-generation head.

"I had been surfing," says the 53-year-old, speaking to Prestige Singapore in an exclusive interview at Watches and Wonders. "That was about a year ago. I tried surfing in the Mediterranean Sea," he recalls, adding ruefully, "The waves were not kind to me."

Wipeouts notwithstanding, that experience led to the creation of an outstanding timepiece. "I don't have a marketing brief telling me do this or that," he says with characteristic candour. "I do whatever I have in mind and what is fun. Very often, when you see these images (at Patek), it is because I have been travelling. When I see certain things, I'll think, ah, I have to keep this in mind."

INNOVATION WITH PURPOSE