A Russian Gains Prominence Among Fine Watchmakers
A Russian Gains Prominence Among Fine Watchmakers
AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTYou have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.Konstantin Chaykin, in Paris for the Belles Montres exhibition, peering through the transparent dial of his Levitas watch.Credit...Konstantin ChaykinJan. 21, 2013PARIS — Soviet-era Russia was not a particularly friendly environment for aspiring fine watchmakers. For Konstantin Chaykin, who was born in St. Petersburg in 1975, there was no school where he could learn the craft that he dreamed of pursuing. So he taught himself.“I started out selling watches in a small store that I owned,” Mr. Chaykin said in an interview during the Belles Montres watch show in Paris last month. “I began to fix watches myself. I would read up on watch repair from any and all sources I could find. Once I started reading and repairing watches, I never stopped.”In 2003, he saw an exhibition of historic Breguet watches at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. Inspired, he decided on the spot to create his own watches.He started, with a confidence based on blissful ignorance, with a tourbillon — the complication invented by the 18th-century master Abraham-Louis Breguet that remains to this day one of the supreme tests of watchmaking skill.“I learned that no one had created a tourbillon in Russia since 1917,” Mr. Chaykin said. “So I downloaded some blueprints, dug up some manuals and set out to build a tourbillon using my basic watch-repair tools.”Most watchmakers take years to develop a piece from its first conception. Mr. Chaykin, “having fun,” finished his inside 12 months, presenting the first Russian-made “grand complication” clock in 2004. “I enjoyed building the tourbillon so much that I started thinking of creating other watches,” he said.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT