Patek Philippe

On March 10, 1902, at 8:00 a.m., the name Chronometro Gondolo was registered in Switzerland under No. 14 401.

This series of watches features well-established aesthetic and technical characteristics.

The cases are generally of the "bassine" style, the openwork type, in rose gold, but are also found in yellow gold, as well as occasionally in silver and exceptionally in nielloed silver. Various dials are available, in white enamel with a 12-hour division or, more rarely, a 24-hour division, as well as hands of various shapes. Pocket watch cases range in diameter from 32 to 57 mm; they are equipped with movements whose dimensions vary between 10" and 22" (lignes), or between approximately 22.5 mm and 50 mm.

The Chronometro Gondolo movements have the following technical characteristics:

- A movement based on a design by Jean-Adrien Philippe (1815-1894), patented in the United States of America on January 13, 1891 (No. 20,483), and equipped with a crown, a barrel arbor ratchet (winding train) with a wolf's tooth profile, and a barrel arbor with an added square.
- A 9-carat gold wheel train.
- A straight-line whisker escapement with a compensated bimetallic balance wheel and a Breguet balance spring.
- A minimum of 18 jewels (18, 19, 20, or 21).
- Fine adjustment of the winding speed using a snail eccentric, an improvement on French patent No. 142,376, filed on April 16, 1881, by Jean-Adrien Philippe for a precision regulator.

Some models are equipped with a central seconds hand or a chronograph mechanism. Patek Philippe does not produce any other watches with a gold wheel train; however, a significant number of Patek Philippe movements with gold gears were found in the 19th century. In the 1920s, wristwatches appeared with movements cased in various shapes: round, square, rectangular, "tonneau," or "cushion."

Art Deco pocket watches, very thin and with a "curved square" shape, were also produced for Gondolo & Labouriau. To sell its Chronometro Gondolo watches, at the beginning of the 20th century, the Brazilian retailer devised an original sales method: a lottery, creating buyers' clubs. Its members, ardent watch enthusiasts, participated for several months in a weekly drawing. For a modest individual stake per drawing, each participant ultimately won a Chronometro Gondolo (a large gold model with no watch complications), whose retail price, excluding the lottery, was 790 francs.

Around 1925, Gondolo & Labouriau became Relojoaria Gondolo. During this quarter-century, the retailer, located at 71 Rua da Quitanda, absorbed nearly a third of the Geneva manufacturer's production.