Look just below the center of this blue dial, beneath the Patek Philippe name, and you will find two more words that transform the watch entirely: Tiffany & Co. That small second signature is one of the most coveted things in all of collecting, because Patek Philippe almost never allows another name to appear on its dials, and Tiffany is the rare, storied exception. The relationship between the two houses goes back to 1851, when Patek Philippe and the young New York jeweller Tiffany & Co. struck a partnership, and it has endured ever since, making Tiffany the oldest continuous partner Patek has among the world's jewellers. For more than a hundred and seventy years Tiffany has been permitted to add its name alongside Patek's on a small number of dials, and a watch carrying that double signature is prized far above its unsigned twin. On a Nautilus, the most sought-after modern Patek of all, that Tiffany stamp makes the watch something close to a grail.
What makes it more remarkable still is that this is no ordinary Nautilus. It is the 5712, the complicated version of the model, and its dial is one of the most distinctive and debated in the entire Patek catalogue. Rather than the clean, symmetrical two-hand-and-date face of the simpler Nautilus, the 5712 carries a cluster of complications arranged in a deliberately asymmetric layout that collectors either adore or find delightfully odd. In the upper left sits a power-reserve indicator, a small curved scale that shows how much running energy remains wound into the mainspring. Opposite it, to the right, is a small seconds sub-dial. And at six o'clock sits the loveliest element, a combined moon-phase and pointer-date display: a little moon waxes and wanes across a field of stars, while the dates one to thirty-one arc around it and a slender hand sweeps out to point at today's number rather than showing it in a window. That off-centre, three-sub-dial arrangement gives the 5712 a quirky, almost architectural balance, a face that rewards study and looks like no other Nautilus.
The engine that allows all of this is a quietly brilliant piece of engineering, because packing a power reserve, a moon phase, a pointer date, and small seconds into a watch while keeping it elegantly thin is no small feat. The 5712 manages it with a movement built around a micro-rotor. In an ordinary automatic watch the winding weight is a large rotor that sits on top of the movement, swinging around its full diameter and adding real thickness. A micro-rotor instead is a small, dense winding weight, here made of gold, sunk down into the plane of the movement itself rather than riding above it, so that it winds the watch from the motion of the wrist without adding height. The result is a self-winding movement that stays remarkably slim even while carrying several complications, which is exactly why the complicated 5712 can remain as sleek and wearable as the Nautilus demands. It is the kind of solution Patek excels at, sophistication achieved through restraint, and the finishing of the movement, visible through the sapphire back, is to the highest standard the name implies.
The dial itself is pure Nautilus, and pure pleasure to look at. It is a deep, rich blue, shading subtly darker toward its edges, and across it runs the model's signature texture, the horizontal embossed grooves that have marked Nautilus dials since the beginning, catching the light in fine parallel lines. The applied baton markers and the hands are filled with luminous material and set crisply against the blue, and the whole face has that unmistakable combination of sporty texture and dressy depth that made the Nautilus famous. With the complications clustered below the centre and the two signatures stacked above, it is a dial of real character, formal and playful at once.
The case is the one that started a revolution. The Nautilus was designed in 1976 by Gérald Genta, the same designer behind the Royal Oak, and like that watch it took the radical step of rendering a luxury sports watch in stainless steel with an integrated bracelet, its porthole-inspired case with those distinctive rounded octagonal lines and the two small flanks at the sides becoming one of the most recognisable shapes in watchmaking. In steel, with its beautifully finished mix of brushed and polished surfaces and its integrated bracelet flowing seamlessly from the case, the Nautilus is the watch that proved a steel sports watch could sit at the very summit of fine horology, and it remains perhaps the most desired design in the modern market.
Put all of it together and you have something exceptional even by the standards of a Nautilus. This is the complicated 5712, with its distinctive asymmetric dial of moon phase, pointer date, power reserve, and small seconds, driven by an ultra-thin micro-rotor movement, cased in the steel Genta icon with its textured blue dial, and then crowned with the one extra detail that sends collectors into raptures: the Tiffany & Co. signature, the mark of a partnership between two great houses that has lasted since 1851. It is a watch where every layer, the design, the complication, the movement, and the double signature, is itself something special, and where the sum is one of the most quietly thrilling watches a collector could hope to own. It wears its rarity without a trace of noise, a steel sports watch that happens to be, in every detail, extraordinary.
