Borna Boschunjak
Think of your perfect watch with the complexity of your calendar. Naturally, what comes to mind varies widely based on personal preference, but nasty symmetry and readability are not nasty, cutoff counts, or anything like that. As part of Patek Philippe’s 2025 watch and mysterious release, we received a refresh of three registered annual calendar moon phases of Ref 4946R.
Well, it’s kind of thing. Something has always been bothering me about these “Calatrava style” annual calendars, as my personal bias is well recognized and acknowledged, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Using the new 4946R, I looked at it, looked at it, decided it was time to trouble me, but tried to explain my subjective reasoning with difficult facts.
Symmetry isn’t always desirable
At a day and age when Cartier crashes, Bernellon’s Mirage, Toredano and Chang all furious, the above bold statement is really not that bold. So, I’ve stated the obvious, so I’ll do better for you. Symmetry can be very enjoyable. I know, it’s amazing. It seems this particular Patek is making everything about it. The subdials are vertically symmetric, with no cutoff time numbers and even the date window framed in the center. Given the frequent criticism of Patek for how asymmetrical some of their calendar clocks are (Platinum Cubitus Reference 5822p-001 comes to mind soon), we need to praise this dedication to symmetry.
Still, it doesn’t pull it off well. All calendar information is engraved in the space between the pinion and the number, and the boundary of the subdials actually intersects the root of the hand of time. To explain poeticly, the dial is not given enough space to breathe.
And the worst part is that this becomes more obvious when you look at it all fairly – it’s not even completely symmetrical. On subdial days, “fire” enters the top half, but “gold” is not the case, and “sun” is a little out of center. A similar story is repeated on the moon side. There, we spent an even easier time as the designers had to fit only six abbreviations to the boundaries. The subdials can easily be bisected by dots separating the top and bottom half, but those dots do not match the pinion exactly. And perhaps the “Yang” textbook is the one that bothers me the most. You will notice that the sharp tip of “a” tilts to the left of the center.
Looking at the subdials again in greater detail, it appears that the annual calendar moon phase also suffers from some kaening issues. Look at the spacing between the “I” in “Fri” and the dot next to it, and compare it with the spacing around the dot separating “Wed” and “Tue.” And in some printing, the arc seems a bit suspicious to me too. You know those cheap quartz chronograph watches, is that what makes you do a double take just to make sure all the subdial hands actually work? Yes…that’s what reminds me.
The importance of typeface
ref. The 4946R is not the first Patek Philippe in this layout. In fact, a lineage from references. The 5035, the first annual calendar in history, is clear. Naturally, it has evolved over the years and included three advanced research references that I think have made the most of this layout, but it has never been completed. ref. 4946R and 4947/1a have a strange, whimsical sense of not knowing if I fully understand. The serifized Arabic is combined with a star pattern that stretches underneath the moon phase indicator, which reminds you of the wizard’s hat from Fantasia. This worked in the first two examples of Cal. The 26-330 (ref. 4948g and r) is due to the case of the gem set and the mother-of-pearl dial, but it looks a bit ridiculous here.
Ensuring that the typeface on a clock is sound is not as easy as choosing just one good font. Often, it guarantees that some styles of marriage will be successful. Here, the branding and date wheels are found in Patek’s regular monotype groteschroma (stoic, sans serif font), but the Arabic numbers have the aforementioned curly hair serif design. This is where objectivity is thrown out the window. Because it’s obviously my personal opinion that these two don’t go together. I find the date inconsistency is particularly bad, but this happens to be too big for the remaining space at 6 o’clock. We don’t even talk about how unpleasant the colour discrepancies are.
Match things
So I often hear, read, write, write, write, and even write about things that could make my watch a little better. So, this is exactly like you’re reading in this article. But in the face of that, we see it very difficult for enthusiasts to be satisfied. The month phase references of the two annual calendar were not overly kind to do anything I really like. Sizes of 38mm are welcome. It appears that many new Pateks are getting significantly larger. The subtly rising rail division tracks are a great touch and we can’t ignore the importance of Patek’s annual calendar. After all, it was Patek Philippe who invented this more affordable, simple variant into a perpetual calendar in 1996.
Watches are very Nippon item, and only show that even the smallest details are important. In addition, add important price tags in the 5-digit mid-way. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect perfection. This is especially coming from Patek Philippe. PatekPhilippe has capabilities beyond certainty. I’ll leave you with one example of an almost perfect example.
