Piotr Suchodolski, email: piotr.suchodolski@wealth.pl, tel.: +48 512 965 658.
Franciszek Czapek earned a reputation of a superb watchmaker. Aged 20, he took part in the November Uprising and fought in Warsaw as part of the National Guard force. Once the military rebellion was crushed, he migrated to and settled down in Switzerland. That is where he founded, in cooperation with his business partner, a company producing watches. While in Switzerland, he met another November Uprising veteran – Antoni Patek. The two gentlemen decided to join their forces and founded a company under the name of Patek, Czapek & Cie. Mr. Czapek was in charge of manufacturing chronometers, while Mr. Patek was supervising sales and the operational side of their business. The company soon reached the production volume of approximately 200 watches per year. However, in 1845, six years after starting cooperation, the two Uprising soldiers decided to go their separate ways. Antoni Patek established his own company. Franciszek Czapek, in turn, joined forces with another business partner and founded a company that operated its own showrooms in Warsaw and Paris. It also became the official supplier of watches to the court of the Emperor Napoleon III. The 19th-century watchmaker is also the author of the watchmaker’s treatise “Some remarks on watchmaking” (Słów kilka o zegarmistrzostwie).
In November 2015, three enthusiasts of the art of watchmaking reactivated Czapek & Cie company, after three years of intensive preparations and research. They created an innovative model which financed the project based on three crowdfunding systems. The company’s head office is located in Geneva, Switzerland. The Quai des Bergues 33bis model created by Czapek & Cie won the Audience Award in the prestigious GPHG contest (Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève), merely one year after the reopening of the company. For more information, please visit: www.czapek.com
Founded by true enthusiasts for collectors and lovers of luxurious items and beverages, Wealth Solutions was established in 2007. The company’s core offer features the finest Bordeaux wines, unique cognacs, works of art, and other collectors’ items. Over the past twelve years of its operations, it acquired more than 8,000 customers.
Wealth Solutions is responsible, inter alia, for marketing one of the oldest whiskies in history, such as the 67-year-old Glen Grant 1949. The cognac houses Tiffon and Bache-Gabrielsen surprised our customers with special editions of the beverage dating from the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. Wealth Solutions was the originator behind the idea of creating the Spirit Watches line featuring watches with capsules filled with special and old alcoholic beverages. The first in the series – Cognac Watch – had the 1762 Gautier cognac inside. The beverage was officially registered in the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest cognac ever sold on the auction market. The second watch in the series – i.e. Rum Watch – was fitted with a capsule filled with 1780 Harewood Rum, officially registered in the Guinness World Records as the oldest rum in the world. The last instalment in the series is called Whisky Watch, featuring a drop of Old Vatted Glenlivet 1862 – the world’s oldest whisky. For more information, please visit: www.wealth.pl
The song was written in 1797 in Reggio, Italy – i.e. the place where the Polish Legions formed to fight alongside Napoleon’s army under the command of General Jan Henryk Dąbrowski. Given the time and place of its creation, the song’s original title was “Song of the Polish Legions In Italy”. Its text was written by Józef Wybicki, while the composer of the melody based on folk motifs remains unknown.
The song accompanied Polish soldiers on the battle trail alongside Napoleon, which prompted, as one of its important elements, the creation of a free state. That is why the first public performance of “Dąbrowski’s Mazurka” on the Polish soil took place on the occasion of creation of the Duchy of Warsaw in 1807. The song was popular throughout the 19th century, and after Poland regained its independence, it became an obvious candidate for the national anthem. It has finally obtained this status in 1927.
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