Joker

The Joker was born in 2017 from a practical need turned into a creative insight: needing to quickly replace a complicated prototype that had failed testing, Konstantin Chaykin recalled one of his own watches from 2008 in which the moon-phase indicator, positioned at six o'clock, had seemed to him to resemble a smile. Starting from this observation and a mechanism derived from a children's construction kit, he developed in about six months a dial that assembles eyes and a mouth into a grinning face: the eyes are formed by the separate "regulator-style" hour and minute indicators, while the wide-open mouth is the moon-phase indicator, whose movement over the course of the lunar month makes the face appear now smiling, now scowling.

The debut, presented as part of the new "Wristmons" series (a blend of "wrist" and "monster"), was met with great enthusiasm: the 99 pieces of the first steel series at 42 mm sold out quickly, and in the following months came titanium variants, an all-black edition ("Night Joker") and several limited special series, including sports-themed editions and commissions for enthusiast clubs. The Joker's success consolidated the Wristmons line, which in subsequent years expanded to other characters — Dracula, Santa Claus, a Martian with a tourbillon, up to licensed collaborations — while the Joker remained the manufacture's most recognizable face.

In 2024 Chaykin presented the Joker Classic, a return to the proportions and spirit of the original model but with the case reduced to 40 mm and an updated construction standard: the white guilloché dial with green accents (or, in a second version, gray with burgundy and red details) faithfully echoes the 2017 graphic layout, confirming the Joker as the most complete expression of the ironic, narrative language that sets Konstantin Chaykin apart from the rest of independent haute horlogerie.