The Patek Philippe 4947 Annual Calendar Moonphase

Patek Philippe, it is probably safe to say, does not make any boring watches. It may make watches that more or less hew to received notions of what constitutes a traditionally, classically styled fine wristwatch from Switzerland – and that, by the way, is an idiom which the company has defined as much, perhaps more, than any other single brand since its birth in 1839. It can, when it is so inclined, also make watches which are very much not in the mainstream of restrained, conservative timepieces, like the Nautilus range (albeit the Nautilus design has, since 1976, become its own kind of conservative classicism). But more than any other luxury watch brand that I can think of, Patek makes watches which, for all their complexity (occasionally great complexity) and craft, as a rule, could be worn on a daily basis. This is, of course, less true of behemoth statement pieces like the Grandmaster Chime, or odes to the Music Of The Spheres like the Sky Moon Tourbillon, but in general, even the most elaborately involved watches that Patek makes – like, let’s say, the 5236 in-line perpetual calendar – tend to err on the side of being not only wearable, but wearing very well indeed.

The 4947/1A-001 Annual Calendar is a watch very much in line with Patek’s philosophy of making watches which are practical and artistic at the same time, and it is, in fact, one of the most practical complicated watches Patek has made in recent years. Ref. 4947 is an annual calendar with moonphase, with the caliber Caliber 324 S QA LU. The watch is on a five-link across steel bracelet, in a stainless steel case measuring 38mm x 11mm, water resistant to 30 meters.

The annual calendar is a more practical version of the perpetual calendar – and in fact, it’s one of what Patek calls its “useful complications,” sitting in a separate category from the Grand Complication watches.

The perpetual calendar sits at the top of the hierarchy of calendar complications. At the bottom is the simple calendar, which is – well, simple; it consists of a date wheel with the numbers one through 31 printed on it, and a simple driving mechanism which flicks the date wheel forward once per day. (The very simplest version of a simple calendar changes slowly, advancing over a period of an hour or two, and longer if there is a day indication to change also) The next step up are instantly changing date complications, which switch instantly at midnight. Then there are triple calendars (date, day and month) and complete calendars (triple calendar plus moonphase). The annual calendar is next and then, the perpetual calendar.

The perpetual calendar is a kind of analog mechanical computer, which is programmed to jump from the 30th of the month to the first of the next month, for all four months which have 30 rather than 31 days. The month of February is accounted for as well – a perpetual calendar will jump from 29 to the first of the next month at the end of February, and a perpetual calendar will also take into account the Leap Year, jumping from the 29th of February to the first.

The very first perpetual calendar watch known was produced by the great English watchmaker Thomas Mudge in 1726, and it was sold at auction in 2016 to, of all people, Patek Philippe, which makes an interesting kind of sense when you reflect on the fact that while Patek is strongly associated (and with good reason) with complicated watchmaking in general, it is perhaps the perpetual calendar, especially in its traditional implementation, that is, of all high complications, most closely associated with the firm.

If the perpetual calendar is such hot stuff, why aren’t they found in everything from the most elevated Grand Complication from Patek to the humblest Seiko 5? Well, complexity is one reason, cost is another, and robustness is a third – perpetual calendars, for most of their history, have been more fragile than not and, moreover, easy to break if mishandled by the owner (and if there is one thing any watchmaker will tell you you can bet on, it is Sir or Madam mishandling their watch). There have been, starting with the IWC perpetual calendar by Kurt Klaus in 1985, many attempts to make a more user friendly and less damage-prone perpetual calendar and these have met with varying degrees of success (the Kurt Klaus mechanism is completely synchronized, which is to say that all indications can be adjusted from the crown; however, the calendar can only be adjusted forwards. This means that if you happen to let the watch run down and leave it unattended for a few months (or longer) you are in for some strenuous finger exercises.

Now this brings us to the annual calendar. It is tempting to describe the annual calendar as a sort of perpetual calendar “lite” and while it is true that the annual calendar is less complex and less full-featured than a perpetual calendar, it offers other advantages. The annual calendar does everything the perpetual calendar does, but with one exception: it does not “know” in its little mechanical brain, the difference between February and the other months, so at the end of February the owner will have to adjust the date manually. While this is perhaps more taxing to the owner than the faultless attention to detail of the perpetual calendar, it is certainly to any reasonable person as close to an inconsequential inconvenience as there can be and in any case we love such complications less for the five or so calories of energy they save us every year, than for the pleasure to be had in their ingenuity.

If you are looking for an annual calendar, Patek is a great place to start (and a great place to finish, as far as that goes). Patek Philippe was the first company to offer an annual calendar – the reference 5035. The complication, as Patek’s Laurent Junod told Robb Report in 2017, was actually invented by an enterprising engineering student at the university in Lausanne.

“The idea was really the graduate project of an engineer from the University in Lausanne,” Junod said. “He received a prize for that project. Patek Philippe was very interested and he went to work for the company right away.” Surprisingly, the first annual calendar actually had more components than a perpetual calendar, but since it was based largely on gears and cams, rather than the complex system of levers, cams, and jumpers found in a traditional perpetual calendar, it was easier to manufacture.

The annual calendar generally has greater simplicity on its side compared to the perpetual calendar, and it is also less apt to be damaged by the owner. Finally, it’s invariably less expensive than the perpetual calendar as well, although in comparing prices you have to be careful to, as much as possible, make apples-to-apples comparisons – Patek combines both the perpetual and the annual calendar with a very wide range of other complications, as well as various case metals.

One relative rarity in the current Patek catalog, however, are annual calendars in steel. Examples include the Nautilus 5726/1A, the 42mm 5905/1A (which is an annual calendar chronograph) and the 4947/1A we’re looking at today.

I think every enthusiast probably keeps in his head (or on paper or, as seems more likely these days, on a spreadsheet which periodically goes through bursts of obsessive updates) a list of watches that are candidates for perfect “daily drivers” as the saying goes. It’s an interesting term to have borrowed from the automotive world because you can of course drive any car you want every day – if you want to noodle down to 7-Eleven in a Bugatti Veyron Pur Sang to pick up a half gallon of milk and a six pack of paper towels nobody’s going to stop you, and likewise, I’m sure there’s someone out there who wears a Grandmaster Chime to … well, wherever a Grandmaster Chime owner goes on a daily basis. But the term understood more sensibly means something easy and comfortable to wear, endowed with useful features, versatile enough to go as the cliché has it from boardroom to bedroom and anywhere in between, but also to have enough thought and care in its execution to make taking a moment to notice it a source of small but definite pleasure – a reliable pit stop, should you need it, for that little extra jolt of serotonin that helps us all get through the day.

The 4947/1A fits the bill and then some, if you ask me. I have worn as putative daily wearers, vintage 33mm dress watches, 46mm chronograph divers, and everything in between, and as much as I hate to be an instrument of confirming conventional wisdom, 38mm is kind of perfect. Steel, of course, is an ideal metal for daily wear as well – it is unostentatious, durable, has an air of being there to get some work done and help you get down to business, and a steel bracelet – and I say this as a guy who likes to swap straps as much as the next fellow – has an air of permanence and offers a feeling of security that no strap can really match (even the best strap in the fullness of time will shuffle off this mortal coil – usually with obvious visual, tactile, and olfactory signs of its decrepitude – which a bracelet will not do.

And the 4947/1A is more than just an unobtrusive faithful companion – it has its own subtle charms as well, chief among them the dial, which has a lovely, unobtrusive pattern of blue cross-hatching. The moonphase disk is black with a field of white stars and a white moon disk, and the bottom half of the moonphase aperture has the same blue background as the rest of the dial, which gives you the pleasant impression that the whole dial is sort of a miniature landscape seen at dusk, with the moon just starting to poke its head above the distant hills. In short, it is a surprisingly poetic daily wear watch, which is perhaps the whole point – it’s something that reminds you that nothing is truly mundane, if you just know where to look.