Anton Suhanov
Anton Suhanov's path into watchmaking wasn't planned from the start: he studied mechanical engineering at St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, earning a master's degree, before mechanics and horology pulled him in a different direction. From 2007 he honed his craft as chief designer inside the workshop of Konstantin Chaykin — Russia's most celebrated watchmaker and himself an inventor of extraordinary range — absorbing over a decade of hands-on training. In 2016 Suhanov won the Young Talent Competition, a milestone that convinced him to strike out on his own; he founded his own company in 2018, becoming an AHCI candidate soon after. His earliest creations were clocks rather than wristwatches: the Pharos (2019), a triple-axis tourbillon table clock, followed in 2020 by the Lotus, combining the same triple-axis tourbillon with an unusual, flower-like animated time display, and the Black Clock. Only in 2021 did he turn to the wrist, debuting the Racer Jumping Hour GMT — a design drawn directly from the dashboard of a race car — followed by the open-worked Racer Retro, unveiled at the AHCI's Masters of Horology exhibition in Geneva in 2023.
His reputation crossed fully into the international spotlight in 2025. That July, he was named a semi-finalist in the second edition of the La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton Watch Prize; that November, his St. Petersburg Easter Egg Tourbillon Clock won the Horological Revelation Prize at the 25th Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève — a piece drawing directly on the legacy of Carl Fabergé's imperial eggs, its hand-guilloché silver 'shell' decorated in translucent hot enamel, resting on a mirror-polished steel base with no visible support (evoking, as one critic noted, a Fabergé-scale wobble toy), and crowned by a domed sapphire crystal over a 24-second tourbillon and world time display. The GPHG jury called it a genuine revelation — recognition of a career the industry had, in truth, been watching and nurturing for almost two decades.
His wristwatch repertoire has grown alongside the clocks: the Chronotope, with its unconventional weekday display; the Racer, with jumping-hour GMT; and now the Flamingo, his most ambitious wristwatch yet, centred on an original 'flaming balance' concept — a 15.7mm balance wheel bearing three luminescent inserts that form a continuous glowing ring in low light. Its in-house Su26.1L calibre, developed over four years, is hand-wound with twin barrels delivering an 84-hour reserve at 18,000vph, 47 jewels plus decorative ruby elements, and a Y-shaped bridge referencing St. Petersburg itself; the 42mm steel case, domed sapphire, and ruby-set crown enclose a three-dimensional sandblasted dial with off-centre hours and minutes, a 24-hour indicator, and a non-linear power reserve that accelerates in its final 12 hours, all read against observatory-style ruby-set hands, the pin buckle shaped like the balance bridge itself. Limited to 38 pieces, the Flamingo stands as the clearest proof yet that Chaykin's protégé has become a serious inventive force in his own right.