In 1860 Giovanni Panerai (1825-1897) opened the primary watchmaker's store within the Italian metropolis of Florence on the Ponte alle Grazie. Giovanni was involved with a few of the most prestigious and established of Swiss watch-makers, and so established what was to turn out to be a leading family run Italian watch manufacturer. Florence remains to be the home of Panerai watches, and the following provides a brief background to this luxurious Italian watch Manufacture.
Below the stewardship of Giovanni's grandson, Guido Panerai, the household business grew from strength to strength, and moved to the Piazza San Giovanni, where the boutique is still situated today. In these early days of the company's history Panerai had already became the official provider to the Royal Italian Navy and Italian Ministry of Defence, providing precision optical and mechanical devices as well as wristwatches.
Bringing collectively the most effective of Swiss expertise and Italian design, Panerai have through the years produced some distinctive and lasting timepieces. From the Radiomir, created for the commandos of the Italian Navy in 1936; the Luminor assortment, created in 1950 and designed underneath commission for the Italian Navy; to the extra modern Ferrari Collection, produced beneath license of Ferrari Spa by Panerai. Every of these exhibits technical innovation that was produced specifically for the model in question.
The Luminor, for instance, has features specifically suited to situations necessary for a army dive watch. The watch had a hand-wound mechanical motion that had an eight-day energy reserve. This enabled the frequency of winding operations to be reduced. An revolutionary feature then as a result of, the fewer winding operations meant a decrease danger of water seepage when divers rewound their watches. This innovative characteristic of the Fifties is one which has been re-developed to be used in more moderen models.
Panerai has been on the forefront of various technical and design improvements for more than a century now. And the household enterprise was not only all in favour of wristwatches, but also compasses, depth gauges, and torches. Over the decades a massive collection of devices, documents and images, all carefully associated with the historical past of watch-making, has been accumulating and gathering mud within the unique family-run Florentine boutique.
Recently this assortment of artefacts and documents has been expertly collated, catalogued and curated to kind the idea of the Panerai Historical Archive; This archive tells the history of watch-making like no different, and bears witness to the work of the Panerai family from the very first watchmaker's workshop opened in Florence over 100 years ago.
In 2001 the second family boutique in the Piazza San Giovanni in Florence was radically restyled and relaunched below the name Officine Panerai. The identify Orologeria Svizzera still appears on the store door as a testament to the shut hyperlinks between Panerai watches and their Swiss origins. In addition to being the flagship boutique for Panerai - it is here that the Panerai Archive is on display for all these interested in the history of watch-making to rediscover. At present, there are Panerai boutiques all around the world, from Shanghai to Buenos Aires, Los Angeles to Tokyo. In addition to the current Panerai watches, these boutiques additionally exclusively carry Paneria's numerous special editions.