Though the famous Calatrava is — for good reason — perhaps the best known of Patek Philippe’s incredible dress watches, there are myriad others that deserve recognition.
From the rectangular Gondolo to the curvaceous Golden Ellipse, these timepieces, though simple in design, beg a closer look for their classic proportions and strict attention to detail. Patek has been producing such wristwatches for roughly a century of its 180-plus years, and shows no signs of slowing down.
This particular dress watch, a Reference 3409, is a stunning piece from the brilliant mind of Gilbert Albert, Patek’s design director in the late 1950s. (It’s also extraordinarily rare, with only eight examples known to collectors.) Produced in the late 1950s and retailed in 1960, it was designed as a men’s piece, but could work just as easily for ladies’ wrists.
Housed in a 20mm 18k yellow gold case from Markowski with a convex acrylic crystal, and a signed crown, it features a wildly cool, yellow gold ‘bark’ dial with factory applied ruby indices, a matching yellow gold 'pencil' handset, and a matching 'bark'-finished integrated yellow gold flat-link bracelet with a signed safety clasp. Powered by the Patek Philippe Calibre 9-90 hand-wound movement, this piece comes with an extract from the Patek Philippe archives confirming production in 1958 and sale in 1960!
This is more than a timepiece — it’s a museum piece, an extraordinary work of horological art, and there is no saying when one of these will show up again!