Filling In the Blanks
Missing Patek Philippe History Images
Normally, I wouldn't go into such detail on an article, but due to the historical significance of Patek Philippe history, I decided to enumerate and offer detail on how and why I handled the restoration of images, as well as how I created my own composition images.
Once I realized my farewell tribute to Philippe Stern would become a virtual treasure trove of Patek Philippe history, as a highly visual storyteller, I realized there were a number of missing puzzle pieces that would have been superb to have. Let's take for instance, this photo of the TIFFANY & COMPANY store located in New York City at 15 Broadway taken around 1890. This is an amazing historically significant sepia tone image, but it's pretty washed out and low in contrast, and as Elon Musk once famously quipped, "High resolution is high bandwidth to the brain", which explains when I wanted to significantly improve it.
Original image taken around 1890 as I found it before I restored it
You may have noticed how vivid and clear many of the historical images in my article appear. These are not the faded originals like we see pictured above, but faithfully restored images as we see below. As a historian, my aim has never been simply to show what the camera managed to record, but to recover, as closely as possible, what the photographer actually saw.
Above is the original source version. Below it is the image I carefully restored.
My goal is never to enhance or materially change these images, only to restore them as faithfully as I am able.
I prefer to experience the past the way I see the present—in vivid, bright color and high resolution, the way the world looks on a large hyper-immersive 4K HDR screen, rather than through the snow, rolling lines, ghosting, and soft, washed-out picture of a tiny 9-inch black-and-white television. For that reason I spend considerable time restoring these vintage photographs to a high degree of photorealism.
I felt like the image above was incomplete, as it didn't show the Tiffany & Company Store located at 15 Broadway in NYC with the awnings down, but it did provide some hints to the striped repeat pattern on the awnings. So I did a deeper dive and found a photo of the same building with the awnings down, and then when I zoomed-in, I could not only see the exact shape of the awnings, as well as their repeat pattern which we see pictured below on the right.
I analyzed the color or contrast of the fabric on the awnings, as well as the hue, and did a bunch of research, and concluded that it was highly likely the stripes were red and white, thus I created the image below, but did NOT include it in my story for the sake of historical accuracy. Another detail, and consideration is that American was still young and prod when that image was taken, and if you look closely you will notice there are many, many American flags all over the front of the TIFFANY & COMPANY New York flagship store.
Once again, I am including the BEFORE image below, so you can see it next to my ultimate AFTER image above. Of course I brought down the striped awnings as well in the image above, which makes it look even more dimensionally realistic to my eyes. In particular, I love how 3-dimensional the Tiffany Atlas clock statue in green came to life. The Clock statue was based upon Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders, but Tiffany brilliantly put a clock on his shoulders instead.
In my Philippe Stern article with so much Patek Philippe history, I attempted to reconstruct the visual record so the context, the timeline, and the relationships are easy to understand. Where the photographic record is complete, I restore it, as we see with the images above. Often times this includes color correction, or colorizing black and white images, as well as significantly increasing the resolution and detail. Also, it's common for me to "pop" the contrast and significantly increase the gamma levels while enhancing the exposure, and sharpness on all image.
Recreating Images
This is were things get interesting for me, as I have restored countless thousands of images for many years, here on PatekMagazin.com, as well as on RolexMagazine.com and PaneraiMagazine.com, but the challenge with this story was that the photographic record either didn't exist, or left much to be desired.
Where there are missing links—two people who belonged together and were never photographed that way—I complete it as faithfully as the surviving likenesses allow. For that reason I spend considerable time restoring these vintage photographs to a high degree of photorealism.
Let's start with Patek and Philippe. The framed images below depict the Patek Philippe's founders, Antoine Norbert de Patek, and Jean-Adrien Philippe. The images below have been presented by Patek Philippe for many decades, going back perhaps as far as the 1950s—so far as I can tell.
Patek Philippe also has paintings of Patek and Philippe which are pictured below. One of the great questions, is "are the photos derivative of the paintings, or are the paintings derivative of the photos?"
As a highly advanced graphic artist, after having very carefully analyzed these images, I see a number of telltale signs that make them apocryphal, beginning with their coats which appear to be drawn in or painted. In other word, they don't look natural at all. In particular, their shoulder look really strange and inauthentic.
Most importantly their jackets don't appear to be period correct, as back when they would have been taken, around 1870 men like Patek and Philippe would likely have worn jackets with exposed waistcoat vests underneath that would have shown their pocket watch fob chains, and for all practical purposes would NOT have worn such high high cut double breasted coats that would have made accessing their pocket watches very inaccessible and challenging. Also, if the faces are based upon actual photos of Patek and Philippe, they would have had to be taken toward the end of each of their lives accordingly. I think most people would agree the two men in the photo/illustrations and paintings above are not that relatable or attractive.
The Bibliothèque de Genève was founded in 1559 alongside Calvin’s Academy and is one of the oldest libraries in Switzerland still operating. It is run by the City of Geneva and also serves as the legal-deposit library for the canton, so it keeps a copy of publications connected to Geneva.
I took the undated illustration pictured above on the left and in my attempt to restore it, removed all Patek's facial hair so we could see what he would have looked like when he was younger, without the mutton chop sideburns, which we see in the image on the right that I created (above).
I wanted to see a photo of Patek and Philippe standing next to each other, in color, when they were younger and more dynamic, and didn't look like old men, thus I created the image below for my story. If this were a real image it would depict what they would have looked like around 1865.
Patek himself, famously made a journey to the United States in 1854, when he was 42 years old, and I wanted to see what he would have looked as he sailed into New York harbor, thus I tool the liberty of creating the image below. I think it would be safe to assume Patek would likely have always had his waistcoat (vest) visible, as he was probably always pulling his Patek Philippe & Co. pocket watch out, like a gunslinger cowboy with his six gun, or like you and I pull out our iPhones out frequently from our pockets today. I realize that some people might take issue with me playing with historical detail like this, but since no image exists, I wanted to bring all the characters in the story by making them as life-like as possible.
In late 1854, at age 42, Antoine Norbert de Patek arrived in the New World at the Port of New York City
In case you are wondering, why I didn't use Patek Philippe's images or painting as seen below in my main story, is I don't know for a fact if they are not composited images, just like mine are. In other words, there is zero evidence I am aware of that speaks definitely on the origin or dates of these images, and I would say there is a 99%++ chance their jacket's were drawn in my a master illustrator at the time the were made, which I would guess to be around the 1950s.
In the future, I plan to reach out to Patek Philippe for clarification on this subject, and once I hear back, I will update this section. I don't mean to be too redundant, but I think my image below is arguably more accurate as to what they looked like when they were younger, and I really like the fact that you can see their pocket watch chains and fobs dangling from their vest pockets. I mean after all, these are Patek and Philippe, and I can't imagine they would wear coats as depicted above which would have hidden their Patek Philippe pocket watches they were so proud of wearing.
The Stern Family
The Sterns bought Patek in nineteen thirty-two as the brothers Charles and Jean, then Henri took over, and the surviving photos of the earlier generations are scattered and sometimes misleading on ages and relationships as we see in the image below from Patek Philippe.
There are a number of age related challenges and confusion points with the images above which are not chronologically correct. Henri (upper left) and Louise Stern (upper right) were married and had two sons, Charles and Jean Stern (middle center). The challenge with the image above is Charles looks way older than his father, Henri, and his mother, Louise looks like she is around Charles' age. Also Jean Stern looks like he is young enough to be Charles' son or grandson, despite the fact they were brothers, and we don't know for a fact who was older. This is clearly due to the fact that all four photos were taken at quite different times in their lives, which initially confused me as a historian.
I wanted to see a photo of the Stern family which included Henri Stern (father) with Louise Stern (mother), with their two boys, Charles and Jean in a family portrait so we could get the proper context for their disparate ages, and since there is not such an image, I decided to take their likenesses and recreated such an image, which appears in my story, and we see it below. This image is what the Stern family would have looked like around 1896.
The next challenge is I wanted to see brothers, Charles and Jean Stern pictured together, but the only known images of them which appear below courtesy of Patek Philippe are severely confusing as Jean Stern looks like he is around 20 years old, and Charles looks like he is around 70 years old. Also, if you look closely you will notice that when this photo of Charles Stern was taken, he had white mustache, which is kind of blown out in the photo.
In particular, I wanted to see an image of what the Stern brothers looked like around the time they purchased Patek Philippe, around 1932, thus I created the image below, which obviously make Charles look way younger, and Jean older than in the images above. Once again, the image above of Jean Stern looks like his jacket, shirt and tie were hand drawn.
Next, I REALLY wanted to see a photo of Charles Stern, with his son, Henri Stern, but once again there are no such photos, thus I created the image below, which shows what Charles and Henri would have looked like around 1942, and I placed them in the Patek Philippe Salon. Also let's not forget that Patek Philippe's whole thing is one generation passing the baton to the next, so and we have that with Henri Stern all the way down to today with Theirry Stern and his sons, so I wanted to see Charles Stern with his son, Henri.
Charles Stern with son, Henri Stern depicted above in composite image in Patek Philippe Salon around 1942
So how did I create the image above? I started with the image below of Henri Stern, and de-aged him back to the way he likely would have looked in 1942.
First, I took the image above which appears courtesy of Patek Philippe, of Henri Stern, and I restored and colorized it, as we se with the image below which appears in my article. This is a concrete example of how I restore images back to see not the existing image, but what the person who took the photo saw when they originally took the photo.
Next I took the low resolution photo of Charles Stern, pictured below on the left, and make is high resolution and colorized it so we could see what he really looked like in person.
Then I took the black and white photo below of the Patek Philippe salon that was taken in 1895, and did my best to colorize and bring it to life.
My restored version of the Patek Philippe Salon I colorized can be seen below.
My resulting composite image is pictured below. The image below took me around 30 hours to construct, as it required a great deal of tedious, painstaking experimentation and hand airbrushing.
I didn't stop at just creating an image that depicts father and son, Charles and Henri Stern in the Patek Philippe Salon around 1942, but I also wanted to include the two Patek Philippe Reference 1527 Prototype triple calendar models Charles Stern was working on developing at the time, so I placed them on the countertop as seen above in the lower right hand corner, and we see the actual watches below. Also, I made the "TIFFANY & CO. MAKERS N.Y." brand designation clearer and more legible on the safe, which resides under the famous Patek Philippe awards display that appears above it. Just to be crystal-clear, I realize on the one hand that the image above does not exist, but if they posed together around 1942 in the Patek Philippe Salon, it would have looked remarkably similar.
Bringing Watches to Life
1868
Patek Philippe essentially invented the wristwatch, when in 1868 they created this model made for Countess Koscowicz of Hungary, which not only required a key to be wound, but also featured a large diamond array that closed to cover the watch so it was not visible.
In other words, in order to check the time the Countess was required to flip up the covert bejeweled door that covered the watch. It's fascinating to consider that the very first wristwatch ever made was a women's model, and that it would take decades before men would start wearing a wristlet watch. The challenge with the image above is that it looks like it could almost be a wall clock as it offers no sense of scale and proportion. This I created the image below that shows exactly what it would have looked like on the Princess's wrist.
King Michael's
Roller Calendar Prototype from 1940
In my article, I share the fact that the only published image of this piece unique Patek Philippe rolling calendar model appeared in a postage stamp size image in the Swiss Horological Journal, which leaves a lot to be desired, and certainly does not give the viewer an idea of what it must have looked like in person.
This is why I look the liberty of creating the image below that show the exact scale and detail of the actual Patek Philippe. Seeing it this way, with all this added context serves to really make it look realistic and immersive, which has always been my goal as a highly visual storyteller.
I took the exact same liberty by creating the image below that shows the 1959 Patek Philippe "King Cobra" model in a wrist shot to the viewer can see what it would have really looked like out in the wild, as apposed be being seen behind glass in the Patek Philippe Museum.
