Open Face in 18ct Gold

In the late 1880s, a Patek Philippe like this was the finest watch a man could commission, and someone commissioned this one with the case as the centrepiece. The back is hand-engraved with a spray of five-petalled blossoms and leaves inside a plain polished border: each flower outlined and shaded with the graver, the ground between them cut to a fine cross-hatched matt so the bright petals stand out against it. Work at this level was ordered and paid for, and meant to be noticed; that it survives crisp is the notable part, because engraving on gold this soft usually softens over a century of pockets and palms.

The rest of the watch keeps pace. The white enamel dial is original and unrestored, slim black Roman numerals inside a railway minute track numbered every five minutes, the early PATEK, PHILIPPE & Co signature above the centre. The hands are gold lozenge pattern, the open diamond form the house used through the late nineteenth century, with a blued steel hand in the sub-seconds at six. Under magnification a single fine hairline runs from the centre arbor down to the sub-seconds rim; it is stable, hard to find at arm's length, and the only mark on an otherwise bright, glassy surface. At 48.7mm it has the full presence of a Victorian gentleman's watch, and the pendant push-piece and hinge still work with the clean action of a well-kept case.

Watches like this were bought once and kept for life, and this one reads like it was: used, cared for, never restored because it never needed to be. It winds, sets and runs well.

The marks, the movement and the condition are set out piece by piece in the drawers below; the three signatures and the factory-engraved cuvette are recorded in The Record.