The whacky, wonderful world of Konstantin Chaykin

Konstantin Chaykin plays with time and his watches reflect the broad range of his interests.

Konstantin Chaykin would make for an interesting dinner guest. And that’s not just because he is one of the most creative —and technically accomplished— independent watchmakers around. Chaykin’s watches reflect his broad range of interests.

His Cinema Watch, a tribute to the first days of film-making, is the world’s first mechanical watch with a built-in miniature zoopraxiscope. The zoopraxiscope, invented by Eadweard Muybridge, was the world’s first moving picture projector. It is especially famous for the influential The Horse in Motion, which, in the late 1800s, laid to rest a pressing question: does a galloping horse have all four hooves off the ground at once? That animation comes alive on the dial of the Cinema Watch at the press of a second crown.

Chaykin’s Cinema Watch, a nod to the first days of film-making, is the world’s first mechanical watch with a built-in miniature zoopraxiscope.

As impressive is the Moscow Computus Easter Clock, which is housed in a miniature version of St Basil’s Cathedral in the Russian capital. It presents the date of Easter on both Julian and Gregorian calendars and has four different faces that display over 25 different functions.

Housed in a miniature version of St Basil’s Cathedral, Chaykin's Moscow Computus Easter Clock presents the date of Easter on both Julian and Gregorian calendars.

And, then there is the joker series, a wacky take on time, with the eyes showing the hours and minutes with their pupils and a lolling tongue displaying the phases of the moon.

In the joker series watches, the eyes show the hours and minutes and a lolling tongue displays the phases of the moon.

Chaykin, the only Russian watchmaker to be part of the Academie Horlegere des Createurs Independants, is a self-taught watchmaker who, while growing up in St Petersburg, was more interested in radio communications than horology.

“I studied radio communications at college and was a door-to-door salesman for a while before finally starting a micro-business which involved a friend and I buying watches in Moscow and selling them in St Petersburg. I still have no idea why we chose to sell watches and not something else,” says Chaykin, who moved to Moscow over a decade ago.

Neither does he quite know why he started making timepieces. After making a watch for his father on his 50th birthday in 2003, Chaykin focused on wall clocks, and these included a computus clock with an Orthodox Easter date indicator.

In 2008, Chaykin, 46, went to the Basel watch fair with a second, more complicated version of the computus clock, and things gradually began taking a turn. Chaykin worked on several bespoke watches for customers across the world, including buyers from India, before the Joker won him international recognition.

Today, Chaykin’s website lists a range of timepieces and clocks but as always, he says, everything starts with an idea and a sketch. “It helps me to combine three things–the appearance of the timepiece, how the movement will look and its philosophy.”

For a man who displays the passage of time in a variety of ways, Chaykin has a prosaic view of it. “I’m familiar with the Indian concept of cyclical time and the western concept of linear time, but to me, it’s all about carpe diem, of making the most of the time you have,” says Chaykin.

Chaykin spends much time in museums and archives before he begins work on a watch project. He says he spent over a year delving into the history of early cinema while making the Cinema Watch. His curiosity about the traditional—and highly accurate — Jewish system of measuring time led to the ‘Decalogue’ collection and one of his many horological ambitions is inspired by the 18th-century Russian inventor and watchmaker Ivan Kulibin’s legendary “planetary watch”, said to have been made between 1786 and 1801.

The Mars Conqueror, a tribute to Soviet fighter aircraft, is made of titanium and indicates both Earth and Martian time on a sub-dial at six o'clock.

And it’s not always the past that fires up his imagination. One of his more recent limited edition projects is the Mars Conqueror MK3 Fighter. Powered by an ETA calibre that offers 42 hours of power reserve, the Mars Conqueror, whose looks are a tribute to Soviet fighter aircraft, is made of titanium and indicates both Earth time as well as Martian time on a sub-dial at six o'clock.