Patek Philippe Twenty 4 22mm White Gold

Antoine Norbert de Patek, a Polish cavalry officer exiled after the November Uprising, founded a watch business in Geneva in 1839 with his countryman François Czapek. The partnership dissolved after six years, and in 1845 Patek took on the French watchmaker Adrien Philippe, inventor of the keyless winding crown. The firm became Patek Philippe in 1851.

That single invention mattered more than any other in the company's early history: it removed the winding key, and every modern watch descends from it. Queen Victoria bought a Patek pendant watch at the Great Exhibition the same year, establishing the royal patronage the house has traded on ever since.

The Stern family, dial manufacturers and long-standing suppliers, bought the company in 1932 during the Depression. Four generations later it remains in their hands — the last independent family-owned manufacture in Geneva, currently led by Thierry Stern.

Patek's reputation rests on complications: the Calibre 89 of 1989 carried thirty-three of them, and the Grandmaster Chime remains among the most complicated wristwatches made. The Nautilus, drawn by Gérald Genta in 1976 as a steel luxury sports watch, became an unlikely commercial phenomenon four decades after launch.

Production stays deliberately modest, in the tens of thousands annually, and every watch carries the Patek Philippe Seal, an in-house standard the company adopted in 2009 after abandoning the Geneva Seal as insufficiently strict.