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Patek Philippe’s relationship with the United States is a long and successful one.
It started in 1847, when Tiffany began a commercial relationship with Patek Philippe.
Then in 1851 a partnership between the two companies allowed each to represent the other’s
products in Geneva and New York.
One specific
fruit of that union was an open-faced pocket watch made in yellow gold with
an enameled dial, presented to the young New York retailer in 1850, purchased for
470 francs.
That watch began what was to be the Swiss firm’s most fruitful global partnership.
In the century and a half since that time,
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prominent collectors from the United States
have time and again been enamored of the Geneva manufacture, ordering customized timepieces
with unusual assemblages of complications or unique dials.
Not
surprisingly, the Patek Philippe Museum in Geneva is now home to many of these pieces.
But on occasion the company displays them in the land of their original owners. This past fall,
a modest collection of twelve timepieces once owned by American collectors was seen at two
locations: in Govberg’s Jewelers at Boyd’s in downtown Philadelphia, and at Betteridge
Jewelers in Greenwich, Connecticut.
The watch
made in 1850 for Tiffany (above) was in the collection. We have assembled information
and images about many of the remaining timepieces seen in the collection. You’ll note that many
of the collectors were successful American industrialists, including Charles Brush, a pioneer of
the U.S. electrical industry who formed the foundation for Union Carbide. Another collector,
James Ward Packard, is noted for founding
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