FInland Is a kInd oF unusual Place... everyone vaguely knows that

SARPANEVA WATCHES OY
TALLBERGINKATU 1, P.O. BOX 41
FI-00180 HELSINKI, FINLAND
WWW.SARPANEVAWATCHES.COM
DOMICILE: HELSINKI
BUSINESS ID: FI18044044
VAT NO: 1804404-4
For Immediate Press Release – 7 July 2008
Finland is a kind of unusual place...
Everyone vaguely knows that Finland is a rather unusual country, located someplace in the
neighborhood of the Nordic lands far to the north of the European continent. Experienced
travelers might also have heard about the short, silent Laplanders or Sami living in conclave with
their beloved reindeer in the woods not so far from the North Pole, and experts of the second
degree will know about the never setting sun of the Finnish mid-summer, as well as the Finnish
rites of celebrating the longest day by praising Dionysus with vast amounts of alcohol. However,
of one thing we can be certain: even if you only know the name of the country, the last thing you
would associate with it is watchmaking.
A renowned watchmaking school, the only truly independent school of its kind in the world,
located at Leppävaara, has been silently supplying highly trained graduates to the Swiss watch
industry for many years now. You will find them working for all the major Swiss brands, often
dealing with complications and even heading watchmaking and restoration departments in
Switzerland. However, mechanical Finnish watches, produced and designed in Finland, were to
remain unknown – until now, that is.
Sarpaneva Watches
Sarpaneva Watches is Finland’s only mechanical watchmaking company, solely dedicated to the
design and production of mechanical wristwatches. Located in the country’s capital Helsinki, the
workshop was started in 2003 by Stepan Sarpaneva after years of training in both Finland and
Switzerland that covered watchmaking in all its varieties, including hands on experience at several
of Switzerland’s major houses with highly specialized work on complications. The Sarpaneva
workshop’s philosophy towards watchmaking is firmly anchored within Stepan Sarpaneva’s
deep desire to express himself in more ways then solely through the purely mechanical side of
watchmaking. For this reason his firm’s foundation is to unite a long-term and timeless visual
design together with that of high quality mechanical watchmaking. Unlike the majority of brands
on the market today, this is a fundamental aspect that sets Sarpaneva Watches apart from the
rest; here is one man with the ability to create novel wristwatch designs as well as unite them with
the mechanical know-how of a master watchmaker.
1/5
Design from Finland
Visually, the first thing that one notices is the distinctly different, Finnish design of the
timepieces he creates that are absolutely unique, unlike the vast majority of watches on offer
today. When you discover that Stepan harks from a family of well-known artists and designers,
famous both inside and outside of Finland, it all begins to fall in place. His father, Pentti
Sarpaneva, was well known for his unusual jewelry, bronze and glass pieces, and his uncle Timo
Sarpaneva worked mainly in glass (both sculptural and utilitarian items) as well as textiles and
interior design. Timo’s Sarpaneva’s work was the recipient of several major prizes such as the
Grand Prix at the X Triennale di Milano 1954 and the subject of several studies and books. His
works can be seen in more than 31 permanent museum collections across the globe from New
York to Tokyo. (Those readers who also know the Iittala glassworks will have seen the Iittala logo
many times – it was in fact designed by Timo Sarpaneva).
Stepan Sarpaneva: “Actually within my family, many family members were highly
active in the arts. Although it wasn’t a conscious realization for me directly, I grew
up finding it very natural to express myself by making and creating things as well. I
still have a little stuffed toy mouse that I made from old bits of cloth I made when I
was only 8 years old... However, ‘mechanical toys’ were the main thing and that meant
working on motorcycles. I was taking them apart before I was even old enough to
legally ride one!”
Many writers have tried to explain and define what is at the heart of Finnish design, and each
definition remains a priori a subjective one. But there are a number of points in which even the
Finns themselves will agree.
Stepan: “For me, when I design watches, I can suddenly be inspired by really gritty,
direct and even somewhat ugly looking things like old rusty iron parts or stuff you
come across in junkyards or in nature, whatever the origin. I guess this is a real family
trait; a few critics of my father’s jewelry said it was too primitive and basic in styling
and also too large – actually much more like sculpture. So when I now look back on my
father’s and my uncle’s work, I notice the same family attraction with primal elements
is present, a fascination with the beautiful simplicity and power you sense in primitive
or primordial forms and shapes. But you know, you can’t just stick those ideas into a
watch or even jewelry just like that; the trick is that you somehow transform them into
a new vision or conceptualization, retaining the power of the basic idea encapsulated
within it.”
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Sarpaneva Korona
A good case in point is the recently released Korona series of wristwatches that have appealed
deeply to many collectors from all over the globe.
Stepan: “People ask me where the idea came from, and it is a typical story for me.
One night really late, walking home with my friends, the Moon was full and bright and
shining on the circular, open worked and rusty iron gratings that surround the base
of the trees on the street near my home. For some reason those details just popped
into my head and stayed there. So, next day I started drawing and playing with the
form; made a paper cutout of such an open-worked shape and began piling them one
over the other, and those kinds of things. When I repeated this with metal parts, a
friend of mine noticed that it also began to have something suggestive of the outward
shimmering, the corona, around the Sun’s edge during a solar eclipse. That’s how the
dial of the Korona series was formed – just a passing glance at something that you
normally see every single day – but somehow never really notice.” The Moonphase
indication of the Korona K3 grew from that departure point. “The open grates of the
dial, despite the metalwork, also were suggestive of a forest, or a cloudy night-time
sky, or outer space somehow. I realized that by putting the Moon under this dial it
would allow you to actually ‘see’ the moon approaching its phases – this is something
quite simple really, but which I personally have never seen in a wristwatch before. So
said, so done, and the only question was how the Moon should look.”
Some writers have commented on the Moon’s somber face in the Korona K3, but Stepan has
other ideas about that.
Stepan: “You know, here in Finland, we are not a very extrovert kind of people. Maybe it
has to do with our past history and having been taken over by the Swedes and then the
Russians, but everyone here floats around with an aura of slight melancholy – I don’t
know how else to describe it. So a smiling moon was out of the question, also because
a Moonphase smiling at me all the time is too much like those yellow smiley faces they
put in emails. So I decided to give the Moon an aura of aristocratic melancholy, with a
bit of indecision as to whether he is basically happy or sad in nature. The expression of
the Moon on the Korona K3 just ‘is’ – same as the Finnish people here.”
Creating the two 18-carat Moonphase discs for the Korona K3 itself is also a complicated task.
The first dilemma concerns the dimensions, as the face is only 0.4 mm thick yet has four levels
of elevation. The first step requires creating a drawing six times the actual size, followed by
cutting a rough model from plate stock, one piece corresponding to each level of elevation of the
oversized model. These parts are then fixed together to form the model plate for the pantograph,
which will mill the shapes into a small piece of copper the actual size of the Moonphase indicator.
This copper version, which will serve later as an electrode, is then cleaned up and fine-tuned by a
master engraver before the contours are electro etched 0.4 mm deep into a steel pressing block,
thus creating a negative image of the face. Last, the eyes are modeled by hand into the negative
image and the whole is finished by a master engraver and diamond polished before undergoing
hardening. This is followed by yet another polishing. Only now can the production of the
Moonphase begin. The whole process from drawing to finished Moon takes a specialist company,
also located in Finland, about two weeks to complete.
3/5
Sarpaneva Supernova
The Supernova, (a small run of ten examples, all sold out long ago), was a design taken from
the ‘higher spheres’ as it were. In this case the design was inspired by the explosion that takes
place when a new star is born from older, ancient material. (Interestingly, there is an organic side
to these astrophysical phenomena; all the iron in the universe, including the iron in the red blood
cells of your body, was created in explosions just like that).
Stepan: ”The Supernova was very radical at the time I created it, and I can tell you
it was very difficult to make. The case is very complex in shape and requires polishing
and brushing on different areas that can only be accomplished by hand, and the same
goes for the subdials and hands and many other parts inside the movement.”
Although that edition of ten sold out within a few weeks, it is very likely that the Supernova will
be returning in a new realization within the very foreseeable future.
Movements
Stepan is keenly aware of the problems surrounding the creation and finding of good movements,
and has already been working for many years behind the scenes to find the best movements
for his watches. He was in touch with the firm SOPROD S.A. years ago, and since that time they
have been developing a new movement and have even been working on the creation of their own
balance springs. SOPROD is a small and little known company that is however acknowledged
in Switzerland as the supplier of among others, the movements for the Richard Mille RM007
ladies’ watch and Hautlance. Their new movement is a healthy and stable workhorse movement
using no ETA parts, thus making their new creation a landmark within the ‘movement culture’ of
Switzerland. Sarpaneva Watches is using this caliber in their present wristwatch creations as well
as in future developments to come.
Stepan: “The SOPROD movement is very robust and stable, which sounds simple, but
is actually not easy to achieve. It also lends itself to ideas I also have for the future
to create other kinds of indications and possibilities for my watches, so I am really
happy with this potential. The movement is a starting point for me, and each caliber is
treated separately and finished accordingly with a number of changes for each model
I produce. Since I can change and adjust almost every detail I want right here in the
workshop, it means I am very flexible and able to react quickly to any ideas I want to
implement.”
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A flexible approach
Independent, compact, small, quick to react – these are some of the basic philosophies behind
Stepan’s workshop philosophy.
Stepan: “I have no desire to get too big or become a slave of the watches themselves;
I want to see the design and making of watches as my passion and a place for me to
try out new ideas and react freely to impulses around me. This of course has certain
consequences for me as well as my clients. Of each model, I will definitely not be
making many hundreds of pieces a year in total and I will be changing the shapes of
cases as well as many different details regularly. In addition I will certainly develop
new models and more complicated timepieces. But this has nothing to do with a secret
wish to make people crazy with so-called ‘limited editions’. I just want to stay fresh
and explore! So right now, I don’t expect to make more than about a hundred versions
of a watch before I begin to change things about it. This is something in my family,
my father and uncle were known for this too: after something was completed, they
didn’t hang around enjoying it; they were already busy with yet another new project or
concept. This approach and hunger for new challenges is something I sense in myself
as well.”
What are the consequences of this kind of thinking? Well for sure, collectors and watch lovers are
going to be seeing a number of different watches being created in the future, perhaps in some
cases with matching jewelry or separate jewelry designed for men and women. New shapes and
types of watches are already in pre-production. So the only thing to do for those who are really
interested is to stay tuned for the next episode of this ongoing story!
For press and media enquiries, please contact:
[email protected]
5/5
STEPAN SARPANEVA
Stepan Sarpaneva
at his workshop
Sarpaneva Korona K3
Sarpaneva Korona K3
SARPANEVA SUPERNOVA