Sarpaneva K3 Black Moon

Stepan Sarpaneva, an independent watchmaker / designer from Finland, just launched a new watch. This is the Korona K3 Black Moon and it features an exceptional moonphase!

During the second European get-to-gether (GTG) in Oldenzaal, a new Dutch brand Gronefeld was released. I also met Stepan Sarpaneva, an independent watchmaker from Finland. With a beer in one hand and a pen in the other hand i tried making notes of my conversation with Stepan Sarpaneva.

During this conversation Sarpaneva told me so much about his live, about Finland and how he decided to start his own watch brand. After learning the first skills of watchmaking at the Finnish School of Watchmaking, which is well known in the watchmaking world, he moved to Switzerland to learn more. There Sarpaneva attended several watchmaking schools again and worked for well known brands and watchmakers like Piaget, Michael Parmigianni (together with Kari Voutilainen), Vianney Halter and Christophe Claret. During the years working for these high-end brands and working together with some of the most famous watchmakers, Sarpaneva learned the skills of watchmaking in every detail.

When he moved back to Finland he was already convinced to make his own watches. He started under the name SarpanevaUhrenFabrik (S.U.F.) and created several models equipped with ETA movements. One of the models of S.U.F. is the Komentaja. The Komentaja is a 40mm watch with militairy style dial and comes in either a steel case or black DLC case (extremely though black diamond coating).

But i’m drifting off… the reason for this post is not the Komentaja, but Stepan Sarpaneva’s newest watch. Stepan Sarpaneva offers several models under the name Sarpaneva and the current collection is called Korona. There are three models in the Korona collection, named K1, K2 and K3 Moonphase. They all come in a round, 44 mm case, which is quite flat with just 9.6 mm. It is available in either stainless steel and with black DLC coating. The Korona series are all equipped with a Soprod caliber A10, which is modified by Sarpaneva. Caliber A10 is Soprod’s equivallent of the ETA 2892.  According to Stepan the movement has proven it’s reliability during the past years. Personally i think the movement also looks much better than the ETA calibers, although that might be due to the level of finish Sarpaneva applies to his movements.

The newest creation is the K3 Black Moon limited edition, which was released during the Black Moon Ceremony. Click on the link to see loads of photos of the Ceremony and watches of Stepan Sarpaneva. Here’s a photo of Stepan Sarpaneva with his beautiful new K3 Black Moon.