To the relief and delight of many a watch aficionado, Swiss high-complication specialist Patek Philippe has unveiled three new timepieces for 2020, after the maison initially indicated that it would push most or all of its planned releases to 2021 in response to the pandemic and its economic fallout. The first and most noteworthy is the Ref. 5303R-001 Minute Repeater, the first Patek minute repeater with an openwork-design, dial-side chiming mechanism; the others are reinterpreted versions of the Ref. 5370 Split-Seconds Chronograph and Ref. 5270 Perpetual Calendar Chronograph.

Ref. 5303 Minute Repeater Tourbillon in rose gold

With the Ref. 5303 Minute Repeater Tourbillon, a slightly modified version of the 12-piece limited edition introduced in Singapore in 2019, Patek Philippe builds upon its revered history of chiming watches, which began in 1845 and attained new levels of complexity in recent triumphs such as the Grandmaster Chime. The watch, in a 42-mm rose-gold case with white gold inlays bearing a foliage-motif engraving on the caseband and lugs, has no conventional dial but rather an openworked architecture in which the hammers and gongs of the repeater mechanism are in full view from the front. The movement, Patek’s manually wound caliber R TO 27 PS, also incorporates a tourbillon, with the back side of its cage visible behind the small seconds subdial at 6 o’clock.
The repeater hammers (upper left) are among the mechanisms on display.

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