Sorry for repeat post. Found this article about the History of the Calatrava on Monochrome which claims - without any sourcing — that the PP Calatrava design was inspired from Bauhaus.
https://monochrome-watches.com/hist...alatrava-part-1-reference-96/#image-gallery-1

The article is otherwise very interesting but my BS alarm went off as there has just been too much hype lately about Bauhaus and again, I’m just very skeptical about any and all of the information published on the watch blogs without any attribution or documentation.

@STANDY thinks indeed it’s just an opinion and not truth, he has another and very interesting explanation about the Great depression demanding watches that were understated and not showy.

Is there any serious history of PP which has been written with proper research and sourcing and where this could be verified?

Thanks and best regards
S

 

Many, many reference books on PP as you probably know. One of them probably describes the Reference 96 as Bauhaus inspired, and the rest is history. Or at least is the reason why the claim shows up in so many blogs.

This source quotes subject matter expert "Estelle Fallet, curator of the Musée d’Horlogerie et de l’Émaillerie in Geneva, (who) singles out the Calatrava for having “applied the principles of Bauhaus to watch design.” "

Still only an opinion, but it's an expert opinion.

 

As far as I know, and I admit my knowledge on this topic isn’t extensive, PP has not shared any documents from its archives that would shed light on the design influence. Lacking any contemporaneous commentary from the PP designers of the early Calatrava references, IMHO it will remain a matter of speculation. Simplicity of design, which is often noted as a primary feature of the Calatrava was only one dimension of the Bauhas school, and was not exclusive to it.

 

...A term spread by people who like to add a few foreign words to their monologues to impress others, I'm sure. Another notable expressions bandied about is "The Third Reich" - surely you mean either "Dritte Reich" or "Third Kingdom", not that bastardization???

 

Does a designer need to say "inspired by Bauhaus" for it to be so?
Is it possible for a designer of the '30s to have not been affected by the earlier decades?

A design is what it is, not what it is labelled.

 

I find it interesting that "Bauhaus" when it refers to a watch is almost exclusively interchangeable with "minimalist". Considering that this is very much a Bauhaus inspired watch:

 

Er.... I beg to differ. First of all the way color is used on it is most definitely decorative. And those tiny holes in the hour hand? Are they supposed to serve a function?

Thank you very much for the informed reply and for those references. I had no idea about any Patek book — or anything Patek for that matter.

 

I’m afraid that watch displays all of the flagrant excess of post-modernism.
Where simple shapes and primary colours might abound but decoration was very much for decoration’s sake.

 

Who designed it?

Fisher Price?

 

I tended to first think of brands like Glashütte or Nomos when it comes to Bauhaus style more than PP. off topic aside: The Bauhaus influence is pretty big in my town when it comes to architecture.

 

as they say - pictures or it didn't happen

 

Regrettably I don’t own any of these style as of now.

Like this above. Now that I think about it there are a lot of minimalist PP’s out there also.

 

The Bauhaus, as already pointed out, was not the originator of the 'form follows function' concept (Louis Sullivan) or the programmatic suppression of ornament (Adolf Loos). A number of Bauhaus practitioners (e.g Moholy-Nagy, Breuer) considered that part of what they were aiming for was the application of existing industrial design practices - utilitarian forms, modular design, standardisation of components etc - to decorative arts that had been dominated by craft manufacturing and highly-ornamental styles using classical or organic forms. So they were, openly and avowedly, influenced by non-artistic industrial design.

It's not just the influence of the Bauhaus, but the influence on the Bauhaus that needs to be accounted for. If watch manufacturers like Patek had more confidence in their design (as distinct from the technological) heritage, they might be talking about how Bauhaus designers applied their principles, and not just the other way around.

(And that's before we even get onto the Bauhaus obsession with efficiency, defined as using design to reduce the time taken to perform work and domestic chores. It's essentially a design ethos of people who really, really trusted their timepieces).

 

Mostly, I think, because so much of it is filtered through the aesthetic of Dieter Rams, whose 'less is more' principle strongly emphasised that part of the Bauhaus heritage, at the same time as he extended it to a range of object, including clocks and watches, that the original Bauhaus generation were not concerned with.

 

I was hoping for pictures of Bauhaus architecture rather than watches.

 

Lol....I should not be doing this on the fly.
In Chicago there are many examples chiefly from Mies van der Rohe . 860-880 lake shore drive are one example. The Federal courthouse and plaza are others. Many buildings at Illinois Institute of Technology. The IBM building. The images can be googled.

Many people hate this style of steel and glass boxes.

 

Might need to check the prescription in your glasses - it's written right on the dial....Alain Silberstein.

And he does/did claim that his designed were Bauhaus "inspired"

 

That watch looks to me as an an exaggerated Swiss International or Swiss Modernist (e.g. Helveltica Font, Mondaine dial, Swiss posters of 1950's, etc.) that gives it a playful demeanour.