Watchmaker: Christiaan van der Klaauw
Published on Nov 16, 2019 by Sachin.
Figure 1: Christiaan Van der Klaauw
Christiaan Van der Klaauw is an independent watchmaker who started Astronomy as a hobby and after training for 3 months at the Leiden Observatory decided to turn his hobby into a profession by making Astronomical watches. Since 4 decades his workshop is making Astronomical watches where each watch is special on its own and powered by an automatic movement.
His visit to Eise Eisinga Planetarium 1 in Franeker inspired him to recreate a Solar System suspended from the ceiling of the living room into a wrist watch known as the Planetarium(1999). Christiaan Van der Klaauw is also the former member of AHCI2. The other two most known collections are the Orion(2010) which accurately represents the position of the Celestial stars every night and the Real Moon Joure(2012) which has a moon face in 3D unlike other designs where the moon is represented on a plane. It represents the phases of the moon with the accuracy of a 1 day in 11000 years.
Masters of Time Independent Watchmaker Christiaan van der Klaauw Beat Haldimann
Christiaan van der Klaauw at Baselworld 2017
Footnotes:
Established in 1781, the Planetarium keeps track of planetary movements to this day.