Carpe Diem

 
The Carpe Diem Watch is the latest Konstantin Chaykin watch incorporating a new and unique method for indicating time. In the Carpe Diem Konstantin places an hourglass at 9 o’clock to indicate minutes. The ‘flowing sand’ measures the passage of minutes. The ‘day of the week’ indicator located at 3 o’clock is also unusual: Konstantin used the astrological symbols for the days instead of words. The hours are indicated on a separate mini-dial located at 6 o’clock.

The main idea behind the Carpe Diem Watch is to embody the abstract idea of Time using classic metaphors from the Western canon. The symbols included in Konstantin’s design hark back to paintings by Bartholomaus Bruyn the Elder, Pieter Claesz and Heorhiy Narbut. The main character in the Carpe Diem Watch is the ancient god Chronos, who had birthed Time, the first element of Creation. He is depicted in a personal and vivid form: lost in thought, with deep wrinkles on his forehead, Chronos is enthroned on the miniature dial that only indicates hours In one hand Chronos wields a scythe, while his other hand rests on an hourglass. The starry night sky in the background invokes the cosmic nature of time.
 
Telling Time
 
The Carpe Diem Watch has a mini-dial with one hand in the lower part of the main dial. This is the hour indicator. The numbering on this dial is in Roman numerals.
 
The Minute Indicator
 
On the Carpe Diem Watch an hourglass with flowing sand indicates the minutes. The actual minutes are indicated on a scale located on the lower bulb of the hourglass. The scale consists of six dots stacked in a column. Each dot equals 10 minutes. As the ‘pile of sand’ in the lower bulb grows, the top layer indicates how many minutes passed during the given hour. Intervals such as 3 minutes or 7 minutes are indicated approximately.
 
At the end of each hour the hourglass ‘turns over’, aka empties, returns to zero and the ‘pile of sand’ indicating minutes start growing again.
 
The animated hourglass
 
The minute indicator on the Carpe Diem Watch is designed as an hourglass-shaped opening. The upper and lower bulbs are divided by a narrow gap. The backdrop for the animation is a two-color metal sheet: the top part is gold and the bottom – black. The movement of the sand in this hourglass is achieved using two contrasting shutters: a black shutter on the gold backdrop and a gold shutter on the black backdrop. The shutters slowly move towards each other creating the illusion of sand moving in an hourglass on the Carpe Diem Watch dial. The mechanism moving the shutters is connected to the watch movement via a series of wheels and is Konstantin Chaykin’s patented invention