Description
Rolex does not, as a rule, adopt collector slang. So the arrival of a watch officially named Perpetual Padellone — from the Italian for big frying pan, the nickname hung on the oversized reference 8171 triple calendar of 1949–1952 — is worth pausing over. It signals that Crown is not only aware of its own collector mythology but willing to trade on it.
What it has attached the name to is the most complicated calendar the modern brand has put into series production: an instantaneous annual calendar driven by a new mechanism Rolex calls Haplos, paired with a moon phase rendered in meteorite, and running on the Dynapulse escapement first seen in the Perpetual 1908.
Two references launch together — 53505 in 18k Everose gold, 53506 in 950 platinum — and neither is limited. Both join the permanent collection.
Design
At 39 mm × 12.20 mm this is unmistakably a dress watch rather than an Oyster: water resistance is 50 m, the crystal is domed sapphire, and the case sheds the tool-watch geometry entirely. The 53505 pairs Everose gold with an intense white dial and Everose markers; the 53506 sets platinum against an ice-blue dial — the colour Rolex reserves for platinum — with matching platinum markers. Dial surfaces are grained at the centre with a satin-finished periphery.
The calendar reads across apertures for day and month, a pointer date around the periphery, and a moon phase at six o'clock whose disc is cut from meteorite. Strap options are brown alligator on the Everose and black alligator on the platinum, both with matching folding clasps; the Everose alone can also be had on the seven-link Settimo bracelet.
Specifications
- References: 53505 (18k Everose gold), 53506 (950 platinum); full dial variants 53505-0002, 53505-0003, 53506-0002
- Case diameter: 39 mm
- Case thickness: 12.20 mm
- Case material: 18k Everose gold or 950 platinum
- Crystal: Domed sapphire
- Water resistance: 50 m
- Dial: Intense white (53505) or ice blue (53506), grained centre with satin periphery; meteorite moon phase disc
- Movement: Calibre 7190, automatic
- Escapement: Dynapulse
- Complications: Instantaneous annual calendar (Haplos), day and month apertures, pointer date, moon phase
- Frequency: 36,000 vph (5 Hz)
- Power reserve: Approximately 66 hours
- Certification: Superlative Chronometer, -2/+2 seconds per day
- Strap: Alligator leather with folding clasp; seven-link Settimo bracelet available on 53505
- Limited edition: No — permanent collection
- Price: US$59,000 (Everose, leather) · US$66,200 (platinum) · US$72,800 (Everose, Settimo bracelet). CHF 52,500 / 59,000 / 64,800 including VAT
What's Exciting
The Dynapulse escapement is the story here, more than the calendar. When Rolex introduced it in the Perpetual 1908 it was easy to read as a showcase — a high-efficiency escapement in a simple time-only dress watch, interesting but contained. Putting it inside a complicated calibre driving an instantaneous annual calendar is a different statement: this is architecture Rolex intends to build on, not an experiment it ran once.
The instantaneous part deserves emphasis. Many annual calendars drag their date change over several minutes around midnight. Making all the indications jump at once takes considerably more energy and considerably better engineering, and doing it while holding a 66-hour reserve at 5 Hz is the kind of quiet difficulty Rolex has always preferred to solve rather than advertise. That the whole thing carries the Superlative Chronometer guarantee of ±2 seconds a day, calendar and all, is the point.
History
The original Padellone, reference 8171, was made between roughly 1949 and 1952 in very small numbers. At 38 mm it was enormous for its era — hence the frying-pan nickname — and it offered a triple calendar with moon phase in a non-waterproof case, since the case construction could not accommodate the calendar correctors and an Oyster seal at the same time. Alongside its sibling, the reference 6062, it represents the high-water mark of Rolex's mid-century complication work, and surviving examples now sell for sums that dwarf almost anything else in vintage Rolex.
Rolex then left the complicated calendar alone for some seventy years. The Sky-Dweller of 2012 brought back an annual calendar, but in a sports case and a very different idiom. The Perpetual Padellone is the first modern Rolex to pick up the 8171's actual thread: a precious-metal, non-Oyster, moon-phase calendar built to be looked at rather than dived with.
