Anton Sukhanov is a "young talent" of high watchmaking
Last week, at the BaselWorld World Watch Fair, the famous Geneva watchmaker F.P. Zhurn named three winners of the Young Talent Competition 2016.
La semaine dernière, dans le cadre de BaselWorld, le célèbre horloger genevois F.P. Journe a annoncé le lauréats du concours «Young Talent Competition — 2016».
A year ago, Our Newspaper.ch has already talked about this kind of competition, the culmination of which falls on the largest professional watch show, held every spring in Basel. Recall that it was initiated by the Academy of Independent Watchmakers in Zurich (Académie Horlogère des Créateurs Independents), a unique educational institution established in 1985 in order to prove that in parallel with the industrial production of wristwatches and table watches, both handmade products and independent creators have the right to exist. "We were convinced that after the crisis in the watch industry caused by the advent of quartz watches in the mid-1970s, interest in mechanical watches would revive and increase," says one of the founders of the Academy, Danish watchmaker Svend Andersen.
The first exhibition of the works of the "academicians" was held at the Clock Museum in Lokla in 1985, then only six novice craftsmen participated in it. Today, ANSI unites more than thirty idealists from all over the world. In 2015, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of ANSI, the famous Geneva watch brand F.P. Journe acted as the "patron" of the Young Talent Competition founded by the Academy. This allowed us to expand the scope of the competition, in which 47 watchmaking schools from 14 countries were able to participate this time — their works are judged by 34 professionals from 11 countries. The main criteria for evaluating the presented models are technological boldness and complexity of execution.
Of course, we were very pleased to learn that among the winners there is a 33-year-old Muscovite Anton Sukhanov, a student of the already famous Konstantin Chaikin. Such a high assessment was given to the model of a table clock with a three-axis tourbillon presented by him, for the creation of which, in particular, modified Soviet clock mechanisms were used. Anton worked on this watch for two years, for the manufacture of the case he ordered a jade base, and with a dial (the most time-consuming part of the watch) He was assisted by three colleagues, experts in the field of guilloche, hot enamel and copying. Everyone can look inside the watch thanks to the five windows of the case.
The second winner of the competition is Anna-Rose Kirk, a 27-year-old Englishwoman with a Horizon wall clock, which she was inspired to create by the time designation system in Swahili-speaking countries. "In Kenya, Uganda and neighboring countries located near the equator, the sun always rises and sets at about the same time. The day begins with sunrise; 1 hour corresponds to the hour after sunrise. The moment of sunrise in this part of the world is so constant that it is by the sun that people adjust their clocks," she explained in the documentation accompanying her candidacy, adding that her goal was "to reflect the various concepts of time designation and connect time with the cycle of rotation of the earth and the change of seasons."
The youngest winner of the competition is 23-year-old Frenchman Tristan Lidar, who received a diploma from the Diderot Lyceum in Paris in the summer of 2015. The essence of the project presented by him, which looks like a grandfather clock hidden in a globe, is the invention of a linear time equation. "I bought a regular globe, constructed a cherry wood structure, sawed the globe in half and sawed a wooden plate to fit a clock into it. Under the clock there is a plastic ring with engraved hours of day and night and showing the local time — so you can find out what time it is anywhere in the world," he said.
In addition to the honorary diploma, all the winners received 3,000 francs each for the purchase of watchmaking equipment from Horotec, located in the heart of the Swiss watch industry in La Chaux-de-Fonds and has been supplying professional equipment for watchmakers to the international market since 1946. We are sure that the winners, inspired by the victory, will still delight lovers of fine watchmaking with interesting inventions, but they will hopefully keep the winning models as a souvenir — this is exactly the advice Francois-Paul Journ gave them half jokingly, half seriously.