Drawing on exclusive interviews with its owners and with workers and watchmakers past and present as well as on hitherto unseen documents from the company’s archives, Patek Philippe: The Authorized Biography celebrates the history of a unique company.

Nicholas Foulkes traces the Patek Philippe history from founder Antoine Norbert de Patek’s early life in Poland as a young cavalry officer fighting in a doomed uprising. Foulkes recounts his exile, his life in Geneva. His meeting with gifted watchmaker Adrien Philippe and the 1932 purchase by the Stern family who over four generations have turned it into the legend that it is today.