Striking Simplicity

Patek Philippe’s new 6301P features not only a grande sonnerie with a petite sonnerie and a minute repeater, it also comes with a patented “seconde morte” jumping subsidiary seconds.

- Roger Ruegger

In the world of haute horlogerie, hardly anything is as exclusive and alluring as a chiming watch. Often described as the ultimate single complication in watchmaking, only a few manufacturers are at present capable of producing them in-house. Unsurprisingly, it is estimated that only a few hundred-minute repeaters are produced in Switzerland each year, and only a handful of them are grande sonneries — chiming watches that automatically strike the full hours and the quarter hours. Last November, in time for Philippe Stern’s 82nd birthday, the independent Genevan manufacture Patek Philippe added a new member to its already impressive collection of repeater watches, the Ref. 6301P Grande Sonnerie. It features three classic gongs and two patents for the striking mechanism and the jumping small seconds at 6 o’clock. It is also the first Patek with a grande sonnerie “in its purest manifestation.”

While the invention of the chiming clock is generally credited to English watchmaker Daniel Quare (1647/49 1724), Patek Philippe began producing striking watches right from the start. In September 1839, just four months after it was founded, the manufacture already entered the first timepiece of this kind in its journal, a pocket watch with a repeater (which was sold for CHF 450). In 1850, entries of pocketwatches with a