The legendary Swiss luxury watch manufacturer, Patek Philippehas a long, creative and refined history with the city of Rio de Janeiroespecially with jewelry and watchmaking from Rio Gondolo & Labouriauwhich in the 19th century was located in Rua da Quitandanº 81, in center of the city. Gondolo was the most chic, refined and important jewelry store in Brazil from the 19th century until the 1930s.
The relationship between the companies dates back to November 1872, when Patek sent a beautiful pocket watch to the Rio house, still with a silver case. In 1902, the creation of a true legend of international watchmaking began, with a special order from Rio de Janeiro’s Gondolo & Labouriau to the Swiss watchmaker, to develop a piece that was more resistant to tropical humidity. For the first and only time, the most prestigious watch brand in the world would produce a line of watches exclusively for us, Brazilians.
The first new watch, created exclusively to face Brazilian conditions, was pocket-sized, more robust and had a gold wheel train. The jewel was named Gondolo Chronometer and its first units began to arrive in the city at the end of 1902. It could be completely made of solid gold, and each unit was carefully produced by hand and numbered.
Gondolo & Labouriau sold the line of pocket and wristwatches produced by the Swiss company exclusively to Brazil, from 1902 to 1927, when it developed an excellent and ingenious marketing strategy to sell the Chronometro Gondolo.
The Rio de Janeiro jewelry and watchmaker began offering its customers the opportunity to purchase each watch through an interesting payment plan, in which the total value of the jewelry – 790 Swiss francs at the time – could be paid in installments over a maximum of 79 weeks. , at ten Swiss francs per week. The fixed installments offered by businesses today were born there. The client could also be part of a closed club of 180 members, who would have access to a series of exclusive benefits, such as tours, picnics and other types of get-togethers, which were very popular at the time.
This club of jewelry customers also carried out another method of encouraging the participation of its members – a kind of weekly lottery -, the “Patek Philippe System Club Plan.” Complex to execute, the Plan had two purposes: to split the value of the Chronometro Gondolo and to circumvent the recent gambling ban on the Brazil. Each group of members was called “Gangue Gondolo” or “Gondolo Gang”. According to the website of the São Paulo auction house D’Argent, “Being a member of the club at the beginning of the 20th century was the ultimate expression of having ‘arrived’ in Brazilian society. The Gondolo Gang was famous for its members’ Patek Philippe straw hats, luxurious outings, and shared obsession with owning the finest watches ever made.”
According to the rules of the “Patek Philippe System Club Plan”, each buyer of a Chronometro Gondolo received a subscription card numbered from 1 to 180. Each week, out of a total of 79, a different buyer was awarded their Patek Phillipe watch .
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According to the rules of the Gondolo & Labouriau draw, the first winner would only pay 10 Swiss francs for the watch, the second 20, and so on, up to the 78th, who would have paid 780 Swiss francs. The 79th member drawn, in the 79th week, would have already paid the full price for the watch. He, however, was reimbursed the 790 francs for the house. The remaining participants would receive, at the same time, the Patek Philippe they had paid for in full, but at full price.
All this complex calculation of installments and prizes generated great expectations among club participants, who were eager to put their solid gold Chronometro Gondolo in their pocket or on their wrist. The plan drawn up by Gondolo & Labouriau was so ingenious that, in 1907, there were already dozens of similar clubs spread across Rio de Janeiro and in other cities in Brazil. The watches were accompanied by a luxurious case and a solid gold chain: around 120 grams of gold in total, as well as an “eternal” dial made of the best quality earthenware: it does not tarnish.
The Chronometro Gondolo watch, in turn, was not lost or forgotten in the memories of the 19th and 20th centuries. Nine other models, of varying sizes, were manufactured and named with the same name, according to official Patek Philippe records. Some of them had a solid gold case, with a window also in gold that, when opened, showed the signature of the Rio watchmaker, also in gold; in addition to having hour, minute and second hands. The more complex ones could also have a chronograph, heart rate monitor and even a colored 24-hour dial! Patek Philippe also created wristwatches, for women and men, with cases in the style “Art Nouveau”.
In 2002, the Patek Philippe magazine, on the occasion of the centenary of the Chronometros Gondolo, sent the journalist Vicky Shorr to Rio de Janeiro, to discover the remains of this masterpiece of international watchmaking, but she was unable to find a single model. As for the prestigious Gondolo & Labouriau house – the H Stern of the time – it also no longer existed, unfortunately.
In Brazilian antique shops and auctions, a simpler gold Chronometro Gondolo can be worth R$50,000. There are more complicated models on sale for an impressive R$180,000. For a watch made exclusively for Cariocas, and which was born 120 years ago, it is a beautiful success story.
Today, Gondolo & Labouriau is a distant memory. It imported its last Patek Philippe in 1927 and this retail powerhouse of the past is long out of business. But its name lives on: whenever a Chronometro Gondolo watch appears at auction, watch connoisseurs compete to own one of these beautiful examples of Swiss watchmaking with a South American history – and From Rio – only.
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