Stepan Sarpaneva (born February 1970 in
Turku) is a
Finnish watchmaker.
Career
He enrolled in the
Finnish School of Watchmaking
The Finnish School of Watchmaking ( fi, Kelloseppäkoulu) is a watchmaking school based in Espoo, Finland. The school was founded in Lahti in 1944, and moved to Espoo in 1957.
The school offers two three-year degree programmes, Watchmaking and ...
(Kelloseppäkoulu) in 1989,
earned his degree in watchmaking in 1992 and then went on to study at the
Swiss
Swiss may refer to:
* the adjectival form of Switzerland
* Swiss people
Places
* Swiss, Missouri
* Swiss, North Carolina
*Swiss, West Virginia
* Swiss, Wisconsin
Other uses
*Swiss-system tournament, in various games and sports
*Swiss Internation ...
Watchmakers of Switzerland Training and Education Program (
WOSTEP
WOSTEP, the Watchmakers of Switzerland Training and Educational Program, is an internationally recognized professional qualification in the maintenance and care of fine-quality watches. It was devised by the Centre Suisse de Formation et de Perfec ...
).
In Switzerland since 1994, he has worked for several watch brands including
Piaget Piaget () may refer to:
People with the surname
* Édouard Piaget (18171910), a Swiss entomologist
* Jean Piaget (18961980), a Swiss developmental psychologist
* Paul Piaget (disambiguation), several people
* Solange Piaget Knowles (born 1986) ...
,
Parmigiani, Vianney Halter and Christophe Claret. At Parmigiani, he worked as the right-hand man for legendary Finnish watchmaker
Kari Voutilainen
Kari Voutilainen (born in 1962) is a Finnish watchmaker residing in Môtiers, Switzerland. He started an independent watchmaking business in 2002, building a limited number of handmade timekeepers. In 2005, he introduced the world's first decim ...
In 2003, he returned to Finland and founded a company called Sarpaneva Watches. at the old Cable Factory (
Kaapelitehdas
Kaapelitehdas ( Finnish for "the Cable Factory", also called simply Kaapeli, sv, Kabelfabriken) is a famous building in Salmisaari, Helsinki, near the Lauttasaari bridge. It was redeveloped from its industrial use into a cultural centre which ...
) in
Helsinki, where he makes
handcrafted wristwatches. The following year, he also founded S.U.F Helsinki (SarpanevaUhrenFabrik) to make and sell larger batches of more affordable watches. At first, 80% of his work was for Christophe Claret, but since 2007, he has been making his own watches full time
Sarpaneva Watches are known for their peculiar nouveau-Gothic designs. In contrast, the S.U.F Helsinki watches are inspired by Finnish landscapes, philosophies, legends, and pioneers of engineering, speed and design, such as the Finnish World War II fighter plane
VL Myrsky, Finnish submarine
Vetehinen, legendary motorcyclist
Jarno “Paroni” Saarinen and the Finnish concept of
Sisu.
Sarpaneva Watches are mainly made out of locally sourced steel, because according to Stepan,
there aren't many colors in his world and instead, steel gets its beauty from various finishes, by polishing, sanding or brushing.
In 2009, Stepan Sarpaneva was awarded the
Red Dot Design Award for his Korona K3 Black Moon
moonphase
is a Japanese manga series by Keitarō Arima. The manga was serialized in the monthly manga magazine ''Comic Gum'' from March 2000 to March 27, 2008. The series spanned sixteen manga volumes that were published by Wani Books in Japan. The man ...
watch and by the end of the same year, he was awarded two Good Design awards from the
Chicago Athenaeum.
In 2018 and 2019, he got a lot of attention for creating an extremely precise moon phase calibre called Sarpaneva Moonment®, utilized in the Sarpaneva Lunations watch model. It only needs to be adjusted for a single day of error once every 14,000 years. It launched with a matching
iPhone app
App, Apps or APP may refer to:
Computing
* Application software
* Mobile app, software designed to run on smartphones and other mobile devices
* Web application or web app, software designed to run inside a web browser
* Adjusted Peak Performan ...
to track the moon phases.
Other
Stepan Sarpaneva's father was jewelry artist
and his uncle was industrial designer
Timo Sarpaneva
Timo Tapani Sarpaneva (31 October 1926 – 6 October 2006) was an influential Finnish designer, sculptor, and educator best known in the art world for innovative work in glass, which often merged attributes of display art objects with utilitaria ...
.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sarpaneva, Stepan
1970 births
Living people
People from Turku
Finnish watchmakers (people)