Revelations: Indie Watchmaker Anton Suhanov’s Road to The GPHGs
From Russia, with love: Here’s why we’re on the Saint Petersburg-based brand’s bandwagon.
By Rhonda Riche
Editor-At-Large
It’s been a very good year for Anton Suhanov. In July, the independent watchmaker was a semi-finalist at the second edition of the La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton Watch Prize. And in November, Suhanov won the “Horological Revelation Prize” at the 25th edition of the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève.
Such accolades have put Suhanov on the radar of collectors who are looking for the next big thing. But the industry has been watching and nurturing him for almost two decades. Here’s a look back at his career (so far).
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Like many of today’s most interesting young haute horology brands (see our profile on Fam Al Hut), Anton Suhanov not only got his start far from Switzerland, but watchmaking wasn’t even part of his long-term professional plan. Suhanov studied mechanical engineering at St. Petersburg Polytechnic University (where he earned a master’s degree) and then joined a defense design bureau.
In 2007, Suhanov wrangled a meeting with Russia’s best-known watchmaker, the whimsical Konstantin Chaykin, who invited him to join his company as its chief designer. Chaykin is a small operation; thus, he worked closely with the master, studying every aspect of operating an independent watchmaking concern and eventually rising in the ranks to become the head of production.
The Clock Strikes
Konstantin Chaykin also nurtured Suhanov’s ambitions outside of the company. For instance, in 2016, at the age of 33, Suhanov, with his Black Clock featuring a triple-axis tourbillon, was one of the winners of F.P.Journe’s prestigious Young Talent Competition.
Suhanov conceived the Black Clock before the competition even existed. In fact, he had already designed a regular tourbillon and a perpetual calendar desk clock for Konstantin Chaykin and started to question why there were so few triple-axis tourbillon clocks.
This prize was a catalyst for the Russian, as it brought him international connections (the award is co-sponsored by The Hour Glass, a luxury watch retailer in the Asia-Pacific region) and a purse of CHF 50,000 to purchase watchmaking tools and finance his next horological project.
So, in 2019, Suhanov set out his own shingle. And the brand’s first official release was the Pharos – a desk clock inspired by one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Lighthouse of Alexandria.
This clock, comprising 472 parts and measuring 190mm x 86mm x 86mm, with a total weight of about 5 kg, features the hours and minutes on a round dial, with a triple-axis tourbillon artfully displayed beneath the clock’s sapphire dome.
Suhanov’s next offering, introduced in 2020, was a desk clock called the “Lotus,” so named for its mechanical lotus flower with a bud mounted on a long, thin stem. The petals gradually unfolded over the course of a day, revealing a glass sphere housing a triple-axis tourbillon.
Wrist Presence
The curiosity that compelled him to leave the defense sector also led him to innovate in wristwatches. His first effort was 2021’s Racer, a jump-hour GMT. This watch was inspired by the dashboard of vintage sports cars, with the tachometer located on the left and the speedometer on the right. (He also released the Racer Retro in 2023 that really leaned into the vintage car aesthetic.)
So, Suhanov designed a dial with two retrograde sub-dials, hours on the left and minutes on the right. And in true independent spirit, the whole process – from design and manufacturing to assembly and finishing – takes place within the walls of the Suhanov manufacture located in St. Petersburg.
Suhanov stayed on the wristwatch track with his next offering: the Chronotope. And if anything, he dialed up the design, making the retrograde day-of-the-week display the star of the show.
The display itself is in the upper half of the dial, along with a classic date window. Meanwhile, on the lower half of the dial, six ruby pallets (tiny polished synthetic rubies typically used in escapements to reduce friction) have been inserted into a lever that controls the roller mechanism, which moves the day-of-the-week indicator. This clever trick virtually eliminated friction and wear.
Suhanov’s engineer’s eye also considered these innovations as part of the overall aesthetic. Thus, these ruby-red pallets make the “snail eccentric” mechanism controlling this indicator look almost like a fossilized ammonite shell.
The Chronotope’s contemplative take on the passage of time is further expressed through the design of the day-of-the-week display, which features an arched opening with a curtain with the inscription “Today”, with the days of the week from “Monday” to “Sunday” printed along the opening. At midnight, the curtain jumps to the next day and, at midnight, from Sunday to Monday back to Monday.
Award Season
This brings us back to 2025, as Suhanov continues his quest to bring exquisite clockworks and wristwatches to the world. Case in point: the St. Petersburg Easter Egg Tourbillon Clock, which won the “Horological Revelation Prize,” is like a minimalist version of the luxury Easter egg Carl Fabergé made for the Russian Court.
And like Fabergé’s most famous egg, Suhanov’s version offers no visible support. (If you are old enough, you might remember the 1970s children’s toy “Weebles” and its earworm jingle “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.”)
The Suhanov version comprises three main parts: a base of mirror-polished stainless steel, a “shell” composed of a hand-guilloched silver case decorated with translucent hot enamel, and a domed sapphire crystal placed above the tourbillon and time displays.
The clock is also a GMT. The bezel is notched with a 24-hour time scale, allowing the seconds to be measured by a tourbillon that rotates once every 24 seconds. The time can be set by turning this bezel, which also features 24 time zones. The sector with the local time for Moscow (and St. Petersburg) is highlighted with radial brushing that contrasts with the surface of the other 23 sectors of the city disk.
Anton Suhanov is set to take on the world, and the St. Petersburg Easter Egg Tourbillon is the perfect manifestation of this dream. To learn more about what this young watchmaker has to offer, check out the Anton Suhanov website.