Mechanical watches, esoteric timeless timepieces
Evi Mariani The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
On a cold day in Moscow, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, an old Russian woman sold her beautiful mechanical watch to a foreigner for just US$4.
It was a Russian timepiece, a Poljot watch, certainly far less costly than the astronomically expensive Patek Philippe of Switzerland, but surely worth more than $4.
Ever since that particular watch has become the lucky foreigner's favorite, despite his other more expensive and complicated watches.
"The watch has a picture of Yuri Gagarin on its leather strap," Bakri Arbie of Indonesia, the lucky foreigner, told The Jakarta Post. "Later I was informed that the watch series was the one that the astronaut wore."
He particularly likes the watch because it always reminds him of the old woman. Seems that items that come with stories are more moving than those that do not.
"I love watches and I admire time," Bakri said, adding that he loved mechanical watches more than battery-operated ones because of the sophisticated craftsmanship behind them.
"But I don't collect expensive watches. The most expensive watch I ever bought cost about Rp 1 million," Bakri, who has about 40 mechanical watches and about five battery-operated watches, said.
One million rupiah (US$110) for a mechanical watch is indeed not expensive considering that in 1999 the world saw the most expensive watch sold for $11 million at an auction at Sotheby's in New York to an anonymous collector.
It was a 1933 Supercomplication Patek Philippe that belonged to New York financier Henry Graves, Jr.
The pocket watch took seven years to build, including three years of mathematical calculations before work started on the watch itself.
Boasting about 900 parts and 24 complications (a complication is a feature other than an hour, minute or second hand), the gold pocket watch held the record for 56 years as the most complicated watch ever.
In 1989, to celebrate its 150th anniversary of watchmaking, the same watchmaker delivered the Patek Philippe Caliber 89 with 33 complications.
The complications people can find are, among others, a perpetual calendar, moon-phase dials, dials for sunset and sunrise times, and a stopwatch.
Other complications could be as intricate as a moving map of the northern night sky of New York, which the Supercomplication has.
However, as intricate as they are, most mechanical watches cannot counteract the effects of gravity, which slows down the movement of a watch.
In the early 1970s came the quartz crystal watch invented by Japanese watchmaker Seiko. This Japanese technology opened a new chapter in timepiece history because it allowed the production of accurate watches at a relatively low price.
Many predicted Seiko's invention would spell doom for the Swiss mechanical watch industry. To some extent they were right.
"Recently when I went to Russia again for a research, most Russians wore quartz watches. They seemed to be no longer proud of their mechanical watches like the Poljot or the Vostok," Bakri said.
However, complicated mechanical watches continue to hold a place in some people's hearts.
Furthermore, the boom in the world economy throughout the 1980s and '90s paved the way for the revival of the complicated watches industry.
Dozens of little watch factories in Switzerland sprung to life again, crafting sophisticated timepiece for a small number of people with esoteric tastes.
The sophisticated craftsmanship of complicated mechanical timepieces has proven to be a timeless treat, reigning in the hearts of the privileged.