Computus Clock

One of the preliminary design variants for Konstantin Chaykin's ‘Computus’ clock, where the artist searches for an architectural prototype for the piece. For this blueprint, he took Saint Isaac's Cathedral in Saint Petersburg as his reference, its domed architecture proving close to the very idea of a perpetual calendar.

The search for a prototype extends the line of inventive translation. Church architecture has for centuries served as the vessel of the Easter calendar and liturgical time. Here it becomes the prototype for the watch case: the silhouette of the church, with its domes and arches, shapes the case, while the dial is set into the façade in place of the portal.

The blueprint uses pencil hatching throughout. Thin, barely visible lines mark out the arches and domes of the facade. Denser strokes render the dial, setting the watch movement apart from the architectural shell. Diagonal hatching on the domes produces an effect of light shadow, while the base of the case is worked in dense cross-hatching. This visually weighs the lower part of the sheet and lends the whole composition the stability of an actual stone church. In this way, the distribution of pencil pressure becomes a device of inventive translation: Chaykin establishes the scale of the future piece before it ever takes shape in metal.