Scandinavian watchmaker Stepan Sarpaneva produces approximately 100 watches in a year with his three-person team in his eponymous brand.
For watch enthusiasts, Stepan Sarpaneva, who is obsessed with the Moon, is in a very privileged position among Scandinavian watchmakers. Sarpaneva’s love for the Moon is so deep that almost every watch has a Moon phase complication and more than one Moon figure. Even the stainless-steel bracelet is called Moonbridge, which means Moon Bridge, and features stylized Moon figures that repeat rhythmically.
Since half the year is spent in darkness in Finland, the land of lakes and saunas, Sarpaneva’s interest in the Moon is not a surprise, but no one has a melancholy view like him. The Moon figure in every Sarpaneva watch seems to have frowning eyebrows, but he is not angry, on the contrary, he is the protector of the planet and the friend of Sarpaneva and the poets.
Sarpaneva, born in 1970, actually wanted to be a jewelry designer like her father (Pentti Sarpaneva; his uncle Timo Sarpaneva is also an artist known for his glass sculptures.) But he studied at his second choice, the Finnish watchmaking school Kelloseppäkoulu. His aim was to study watchmaking rather than spend a year idle and then take the exam for jewelry design again, but when watchmaking attracted him more, he continued school. After graduating in 1992, he went to Switzerland to improve himself and studied at WOSTEP (Swiss Watchmaking Education and Training Programme).
Sarpaneva, who worked first at Piaget and then at Parmigiani, met another Finnish gentleman, Kari Voutilainen, and took lessons from him. Has working with Christophe Claret in the early 2000s, he returned to Finland in 2003.
As soon as Sarpaneva returned, he first sold her Harley-Davidson motorcycle in order to establish his own brand. Today he has a team of three people and produces no more than 100 watches a year. Sarpaneva’s case designs are also unique and form the basis of the brand’s identity.
The model with the same name, which was announced last year and tells the story of a wild creature named Näkki living in the swamp, encountering the full moon, or its newest watch, Midnight Sun, are talked about a lot, but the watch that impressed me the most among Sarpaneva’s watches is Nocturne, and I think this watch is a part of storytelling. Not similar. (Even if there is, Sarpaneva produced it.)
Ruler of the Night: Sarpaneva Nocturne
The Nocturne model, with a steel case and multi-layer handmade steel dial, has hour, minute and moon phase displays, a Sarpaneva classic.
