Chronotope
Spectacular day of the week display and peripheral automatic winding system
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Spectacular day of the week display and peripheral automatic winding system
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The construction of a base movement, i.e. a movement that can be used both in a watch without additional functions and as the basis for various complications, is perhaps the most difficult task for an independent watchmaker. It is no coincidence that only a few watchmakers and some watch brands have their own ‘in-house calibers”. Anton Suhanov, an independent watchmaker from St. Petersburg and a candidate of the prestigious international academy of independent watchmakers AHCI, introduces his most important novelty in the collection – the Chronotope watch with a caliber equipped with a rare peripheral automatic winding. Anton Suhanov writes a new bright page in the chronicle of his achievements: After starting his career as an independent watchmaker with the creation of the table clock with a three-axis tourbillon, for which he was declared the winner of the Young Talent Competition, founded by AHCI and supported by François-Paul Journe in 2016, he now continues it with the development of the rare peripheral self-winding caliber.
In addition to the purely practical value of self-winding of a watch while it is worn on the wrist, a peripheral automatic winding system has several other advantages. Firstly, it does not make the movement thicker, as the winder is located on the edge of the movement together with the rotor. This makes the watch thinner and more elegant. Secondly, the peripheral rotor does not conceal the movement, allowing the owner of the watch to freely enjoy its appearance. This makes the watch more attractive and offers other appealing features. Finally, peripheral automatic winders are extremely rare in modern wristwatches, especially those that do not have expensive complications such as a tourbillon or minute repeater. The watch will be rare, collectible and not prohibitively expensive.
In developing the Su200.10 caliber, Anton Suhanov used the Swiss-made Eta 2824 movement, known for its reliable construction, as a “donor”.
The standard central rotor automatic winding module has been replaced by a peripheral winding module designed by a master craftsman, and additional complications have been added.
The complication modules are located on both the dial side and the back of the caliber, which certainly makes the design of the new caliber remarkable.
Unique features include a fine adjustment module with a rotating wheel mounted on top of the balance cock.
In the manufacture of the Chronotope watch, Anton Suhanov followed the traditions of the high art of watchmaking.
Every detail is treated with the utmost care, with great investment of time, labor and attention, using traditional technologies.
This includes hand-polishing the chamfers, engraving, polishing the recesses for screws, pins and ruby jewels, ball-polishing the pins, the tips of the arbors and the pinions, decorative “Côtes de Genève" and “Perlage" finishing, fine straight and circular brushing, sandblasting, rhodium and ruthenium plating.
The sky-blue chatons are milled from titanium and decorated with anodizing.
For the Chronotope watch, Anton Suhanov chose a case with a classic round shape, which he felt best suited the philosophical concept of the chronotope that inspired the master to create this watch. To emphasize the continuity with the design of the earlier Racer Jumping Hour GMT and Racer Retro models, he used eight screws to secure the caseback, which are arranged diagonally in pairs as in the Racer watches.
The case of the Chronotope watch is made of stainless steel and is decorated by hand using traditional techniques: Polishing and brushing. In addition, engraving is used to apply emblems and inscriptions on the case, crown and strap clasp, while fine embossing allows for an attractive contrasting background.
Anton Suhanov did not miss the opportunity to equip the Chronotope watch with complications in keeping with his characteristically, spectacular style. This of course applies in full to the peripheral self-winding mechanism, but the first glance at the dial makes it clear that the main character of this spectacle should be the chronotopy retrograde day of the week display. The display itself is located at the top of the dial together with a classic date window, while its important part, a clearly visible snail eccentric, is placed at the bottom of the dial. With the design of this complication, Anton Suhanov has shown that he is not only a watchmaker and developer, but also a designer who thinks outside the box. A ruby roller rolls along the stepped spiral attached to the tip of the lever for the day of the week mechanism. The snail eccentric is designed so that six ruby pallets are inserted into it at the points where the roller rises when switching to a new day of the week. They virtually eliminate friction and wear in the lifting areas, where the increasing roller pressure would otherwise lead to increased friction. At the same time, the ruby red pallets make the snail eccentric look like a fossilized ammonite shell, a unique and appealing feature of the Chronotope watch. Looking at the dial, we find three more ruby pallets – these are used as colored tips on all three hands and cast fantastically beautiful reflections on the rhodium-plated dial scales.
But the story doesn’t end there. In counterweight of the sweep seconds hand, another ruby jewel has been inserted, namely a capstone. It has a convex shape and was therefore transformed by Anton Suhanov’s imagination into a miniature watch magnifying glass. This can easily be seen when the counterweight of the seconds hand moves over the markings on the dial, including the brand logo. This is an extremely rare situation in watchmaking, where the same components are used both as functional parts of the watch caliber and as a design element. Another ruby capstone adorns the button for switching the day of the week display – with this button, the owner of the watch can take a virtual journey through time one or more weeks ahead while enjoying the view of a well-functioning retrograde display. The design of the day of the week display is unusual: in the arched opening there is a curtain with the inscription “Today”, and the days of the week from “Monday” to “Sunday” are printed along the opening. At midnight, the curtain jumps to the next day and at midnight from Sunday to Monday back to Monday.
The Chronotope watch was developed by Anton Suhanov under the influence of the concept of the chronotope (from the ancient Greek χρόνος “time” and τόπος “place”) of the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin. Bakhtin’s purely scientific concept, which he proposed to analyze the spatio-temporal construction of literary plots and genres, is today often perceived as one of the essential features of the development of culture and civilization in general. Anton Suhanov believes that this concept is quite capable of providing an unusual, fascinating view of the history of watchmaking: “It is very interesting to observe how watchmakers in different eras and countries interpreted differently the continuity of time and the spasmodic, sometimes instantaneous changes in the concepts we use to describe it. It has been known since antiquity that a day has 24 hours. Time moves fluidly and continuously, but at some point yesterday became today, and likewise today becomes tomorrow. The question is, of course, when this point in time will be? The ancient Babylonians believed that a new day begins at dawn, the medieval Italians believed that it begins after sunset, and today we believe that it begins at midnight. There are also different answers to the question of what is considered the beginning of a new week. When I started thinking about this topic, I came up with the idea of a chronotopy mechanism that uses a part in the shape of an eccentric snail. It looks very similar to an ammonite, a beautiful fossil, so I decided to open this part from the dial side. On the snail, I marked the moments of the day’s transition with ruby pallets and placed the beginning of the week at the highest point of
