Aesop warned against insincere flattery in this watch’s eponymous fable: the crow, perched in a tree with a piece of cheese in its mouth, encounters a fox who tells the crow how beautiful its voice is, and how the fox would love to hear those dulcet tones. The crow opens its mouth to sing, drops the cheese into the fox’s mouth, and the fox admonishes the poor bird for being subject to its whims. It’s an unusual inspiration for Patek Philippe and the Reference 5249R-001 “The Crow and the Fox” — which is also the first automation in the modern history of Patek Philippe.
Atop an 18K rose gold dial, in Matara brown with an opaline finish, the gold-engraved elements on the watch dial are the most striking. The gray crow, cheese in beak, perches above a branch of gold leaves. On the left-hand side, the brown fox hides in the thicket. Different pedals and plants are engraved from rose gold, yellow gold and white gold, adding to gentle color transitions between the branches, leaves, and the tip of the fox’s tail. Engraving certain moving parts such as the fox’s head and tail required cuts no deeper than 0.2mm, which were just part of an 150-hour artisanal process. On both sides of the fox and the crow, converging near the center, are two rhodium-plated semicircles: the fox is pointing at the retrograde hours, while the crow examines five-minute divisions from 0 to 60. To tell the time, simply press the pusher at 2 o’clock. Then, watch the animals come to life.
When you press down on the time pusher, the fox points to the hours with its paw or its nose. The paw points to hours before 6, and the nose tilts skyward, noticing the crow and seizing the opportunity. Hold down the pusher and the cheese falls from the crow’s beak, stopping at the minute. Once the pusher is released, these three indicators return to their original position. “Thus the roguish fox flatters the crow,” reminds Patek Philippe, “which, in wanting to show the minutes, drops its cheese.”
This piece of automated magic comes via the Caliber 31-260 PS HMD AU, an automatic micro-rotor movement that’s normally found in Patek Philippe’s perpetual calendar watches. There were plenty of modifications needed: when the pusher is pressed, it engages a lever that activates the hour mechanism at the same time as the minute one, allowing for near-simultaneous smoothness in the time-on-demand feature. Caliber 31-260 appears from behind a hinged Officer-style cover, part of a 43mm rose-gold case with straight, screw-set lugs and a Turban-style crown.
There’s historical precedent for this watch that dates to 1958, and a yellow-gold pocket watch designed by Louis Cottier, the inventor of the world-time complication. It showed the crow and fox automaton in a bras-en-l’air display on the pocket watch’s surface, with a prototype movement also designed by Cottier. Today, it remains a prized possession in the Patek Philippe Museum. Like the memento mori, a wildly popular element throughout art history, the fable behind the watch serves as a caution for mortals: “learn that each flatterer lives at the cost of those who heed,” wrote Jean de La Fontaine, whose version of “Le Corbeau et le Renard” was published in 1668. The Patek Philippe Reference 5249R-001 “The Crow and the Fox” is available now, but formal pricing hasn’t been announced: after all, if you have to ask, you can’t afford it. For more information, please see the Patek Philippe website.
