Konstantin Chaykin

On 23 October 2003, a young self-taught inventor from St. Petersburg set out with an ambitious goal: to build Russia's first tourbillon clock in 175 years — and in doing so, single-handedly re-born modern fine watchmaking in Russia. Konstantin Chaykin succeeded, armed only with books, drawings, and relentless experimentation in watch repair and restoration; his first patent, filed in 2005, was for an Orthodox Easter Computus clock that automatically calculates the date of Orthodox Easter. The Konstantin Chaykin Manufacture, on Leninskaya Sloboda Street in a historic part of Moscow near the Kolomenskoye Museum-Reserve — home to Russia's only exhibition of 16th- to 19th-century clockwork, including the oldest surviving handmade Russian movement, built in 1539 for the Solovetsky Monastery — remains the only Russian company producing high-end mechanical watches with fully proprietary in-house calibres. A team of just over ten craftspeople, working across a two-storey building housing CNC production, movement assembly, and testing all under one roof, develops everything from caliber design to final finishing — perlage, sandblasting, hand-bevelled chamfers, engraving, rhodium plating — turning out some 200 to 250 watches a year, with fully bespoke commissions taking anywhere from eight months to several years.

By 2025 Chaykin had registered 100 patents and 64 utility model patents — an absolute record in the global watch industry, recognised earlier with the WIPO Gold Medal (2013) and the title Distinguished Inventor of the Russian Federation (2022, personally signed by President Putin) — and that November he became the first Russian watchmaker ever invited onto the jury of the GPHG. His seven-collection catalogue spans real range: the anthropomorphic Wristmons (mechanical 'monsters' where sub-dials become eyes and a moonphase becomes a grinning mouth); Space Programm; Classic Watches; Interior Clocks; Unique Pieces; Collaborations; and Historical Masterpieces. His best-known creation remains the Joker (2017), built on an ETA 2814 base with a 61-part in-house module, whose Joker Clown variant won the GPHG's 2018 Audacity Prize and whose Joker Encore Charity Piece Unique sold for 40 million rubles in 2024 — the most expensive Russian watch ever sold. The Wristmon family keeps expanding: Kolobok 2.0 (2025, after the Russian fairytale), the Joker Iron Mask and Golden Mask, Panda, and Venus — the collection's first wristmon with a female silhouette, its moonphase reimagined as the face of Botticelli's Birth of Venus on the underside of the sapphire crystal, limited to 99 pieces. The Putnik and Traveller lines carry a patented complication showing all eleven of Russia's time zones simultaneously, from Kaliningrad to Kamchatka.

Chaykin's technical ambition runs in parallel to his showmanship. The White Rabbit, a transformable, dual-sided wristmon carrying sixteen complications, ranks among the most complex wristwatches ever built; a prototype sold for CHF 420,000 at Ineichen in December 2025. The ThinKing — a mechanical watch just 1.65mm thick, two years in development, wound by hand with a special key or automatically via an external carrier case called the PalanKing — sold as a set for CHF 508,000 at Phillips Geneva in May 2025. Chaykin is also a painter: his self-portrait Reflections on the Birth of Time sold for CHF 53,340 at the same Phillips sale, and A Mad Horological Party, created for the White Rabbit project, later set a new personal record at CHF 90,000. Recent Collaborations have paired the manufacture with the Chinese independent house Behrens (three years running, including the Ace of Hearts and Kremlin Edition), Swiss brand Louis Erard, and even Huawei, for which Chaykin became the first independent watchmaker to design custom digital dials. Earlier landmarks include the Lunokhod (2011, honoring the Soviet lunar rover), Levitas, Genius Temporis (a single hand reading both hours and minutes), and a joint Automaton Joker with Andersen Genève (2018). Inducted into the Temporis Hall of Fame in 2022 alongside Richard Mille, Kari Voutilainen, and Philippe Dufour, Chaykin remains watchmaking's most prolific inventor — and its most unapologetically playful.