Down the Rabbit Hole: Meeting Konstantin Chaykin’s “White Rabbit”
Down the Rabbit Hole:
Every now and then, a watch comes along that feels less like a product and more like a story you wear on the wrist. Konstantin Chaykin’s “White Rabbit” is exactly that: a wide‑eyed character from Wonderland hiding a seriously overqualified movement underneath a playful face. It looks charming and a little bit mad, but behind the grin sits a grand‑complication‑level machine built to impress even the most jaded horologist.
Technical Details
Movement:
Calibre: K.34-1, manual winding with two barrels; highly complex; entirely conceived, designed, and produced by the Konstantin Chaykin Manufacture
Movement dimensions: Diameter 35.0 mm, thickness 11.9 mmEscapementLever escapementBalance frequency21,600 vibrations per hour
Power reserve: 90 hours
Number of parts: 691, including 86 jewels
Functions:
16 complications, including joker indication for hours, minutes, and moonphase; perpetual calendar; dead-beat seconds; suspended time function
Case:
Titanium; convertible from wristwatch to pocket watch and back; double-sided case with dials on both sides
Water resistance: 20 m
Case dimensions: Diameter 42 mm, thickness 18 mm
Crystal: Sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating on both sides, diameter 34.5 mmCase components169
Dial Finish:
Front dial with three types of guilloché decoration, back dial with sand-blasted finish; multi-layer lacquer coating; pad printing
Strap:
Exclusive high-quality leather strap
Clasp:
Titanium pin buckle manufactured by Konstantin Chaykin
First impressions: not your average dial
At first glance, the White Rabbit is pure Wristmon—the time is shown through expressive “eyes” instead of traditional hands, with the rest of the dial forming a rabbit’s face. The pupils track hours and minutes, giving the watch a constantly changing expression as time passes. What could have been a simple novelty is rendered with depth, texture, and multiple layers, so you get character and craftsmanship in the same glance.
On the wrist, the case has real presence but avoids feeling like a brick. Short lugs and a modern profile help it sit comfortably, even though you know there is a lot happening inside. It is one of those pieces that instantly draws questions across the table, even from people who don’t usually care about watches.
Source: Konstantin Chaykin
The Wonderland idea: time frozen at tea
Rather than just borrowing the name “White Rabbit,” the watch leans into the Alice in Wonderland theme in a mechanical way. The idea of the rabbit constantly worrying about time is captured through a special “tea party” function that lets you park the time display at a specific moment. Activate it, and the watch deliberately misbehaves for a while, freezing the eyes at six o’clock as if the rabbit has fallen back into that never‑ending tea party.
Crucially, the movement doesn’t stop running in the background—only the display is held. It is a complication that exists purely to tell a story, which is part of what makes independent watchmaking so much fun.
For the watch nerds: a crowded complication list
Beneath the whimsical surface, the White Rabbit is genuinely serious hardware. The watch combines a full calendar, astronomical information, and a character‑style time display into one integrated movement. The spec sheet includes a perpetual calendar, indications tied to the sun and moon, a seconds display designed to jump in exact one‑second steps, and various ways of tracking where you are in the day, month, and year.
What makes it impressive is not just how many functions there are, but how they’re layered. The same visual elements that form the rabbit’s face double as indicators, so the dial never dissolves into random subdials. The result is dense but still legible once you understand the logic.
The engine inside
At the heart of the White Rabbit is a hand‑wound movement developed specifically for this project, rather than a reworked off‑the‑shelf base. The calendar and astronomical mechanisms are integrated into the design from the ground up, which is far more difficult than simply stacking a module on top of a standard caliber.
The finishing follows traditional haute horlogerie principles: decorated plates and bridges, carefully shaped levers, polished steel parts, and a visual layout that rewards time spent under a loupe. Equally important are the built‑in safeguards that protect the calendar works from accidental misuse, making the watch more robust for someone who actually plans to wear it.
A case that does more than you think
The case is almost a second project in itself. It is designed to be more than a simple shell, allowing the watch to be worn on the wrist or configured as a pocket‑style piece with an accompanying chain. Around the case band, multiple pushers are neatly integrated to control the various calendar and astronomical settings, along with the signature tea party mode.
Despite this complexity, the overall package is surprisingly wearable thanks to thoughtful proportions and light materials. It feels like a technical object, but not an unmanageable one.
Art, character, and a specific kind of collector
The White Rabbit sits at the intersection of mechanical art, narrative, and high watchmaking. It is not meant to disappear under a cuff or blend in at the office. Instead, it is made for collectors who like their complications with personality—people who appreciate an independent watchmaker taking a literary reference and turning it into a working machine.
If you enjoy the idea that a watch can track the calendar, echo the rhythm of the skies, and still wink at you with a slightly frantic rabbit face stuck at an endless tea party, this is exactly that piece: technically ambitious, wonderfully strange, and impossible to confuse with anything else.
For more information, check out Konstantin Chaykin's offerings here.
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