Patek Philippe Expands its travel watch line up with the new Calatrava 24-Hour Display Travel Time.
Among the numerous complications available in the Patek Philippe collections, the exclusive Travel Time system for the display of a second time zone – with two centre hour hands, one of which can be adjusted backwards or forwards in one-hour steps – has met with great success, owing to its ease of operation and excellent legibility.
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Patek Philippe now broadens its vast selection of Travel Time dual time zone watches with a new Calatrava model featuring an original display of local time and home time by two centre hands turning on a 24-hour circle.
The manufacture has already used 24-hour displays in the past, notably on the Chronometro Gondolo watches produced in the early twentieth century for the Brazilian retailer Gondolo & Labouriau. One of these, a pocket watch made in 1905, is now exhibited in the Patek Philippe Museum (No. P-527). For the new Reference 5224R-001, the designers have reinterpreted this type of indication in a resolutely modern spirit. They have also chosen to place noon at 12 o’clock, rather than at 6 o’clock as is usually the case, thereby ensuring excellent legibility throughout the daytime hours.
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To provide these functions, Patek Philippe’s engineers took the 31-260 ultra-thin self-winding base caliber and added a 24-hour mechanism and a Travel Time mechanism. This movement, launched in 2011 in the Annual Calendar Regulator, was entirely reworked in 2021 for the In-Line Perpetual Calendar and was given an operating frequency of 4 Hz, a 20 per cent increase in barrel-spring torque, a mini-rotor in platinum (heavier than gold) boosting the winding power, and a reduction wheel that uncouples the self-winding mechanism when the watch is being manually wound and thus reduces wear.
In 2022, Patek Philippe reworked this movement again for the Annual Calendar Travel Time and developed several innovations, leading to eight patent applications.
The new caliber 31-260 PS FUS 24H movement housed in Reference 5224R-001 benefits from three of those patents, aimed at optimizing efficiency, rate accuracy, durability, safety and ease of use.
Visible through a transparent sapphire-crystal back, the new self-winding caliber 31-260 PS FUS 24H movement with mini-rotor in platinum makes it possible to provide a case whose elegant finesse (9.85 m high) is perfectly suited to a Calatrava model.
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To preserve the sleek lines, Patek Philippe also replaced the traditional correction pushers for local time on the left-hand flank of the case with a patented correction system using the crown pulled out to the intermediate position (backwards and forwards adjustment in one-hour steps). The fully polished 42mm rose-gold case was inspired by that of the Calatrava Weekly Calendar Reference 5212A-001 launched in 2019 and is distinguished by its curved two-tier lugs.
The navy-blue dial shines by its elegance and legibility, enhanced by a double railway-track scale for the hours and minutes. The 24-hour display, with its alternating Arabic numerals and hour markers and its cabochon 5-minute markers, represents a total of 44 rose-gold appliques – polished together to obtain the same brilliance and applied individually by hand.
The Travel Time dual time zone is displayed by three syringe-shaped hands in rose gold, with a luminescent coating for the local hour hand and the minute hand and a pierced center for the home hour hand. Refined finishing touches create beautiful plays of light on the dial: a circular striated center, a circular satin-finished hour circle and a snailed small-seconds counter with a rose-gilt outline.
A navy-blue calfskin strap with a nubuck finish and contrasting cream stitching echoes the color of the dial. It is secured by a prong buckle in rose gold.
