Colibri

Pushkin was a brilliant master of subtle and poetic expressions. Especially the writing of fairytales made him world-famous. „Ruslan and Ljudmila“, the Story of the Fisherman and the small Fish and many other shaped the childhood of Alexander Shorokhov. Besides the avantgardsitic orientation, that dominates his collection, Alexander Shorokhov also has an artistic side. In this manner this hand-enameled and hand-painted masterpieces called “Colibri” emerged.

Two magical hummingbirds play in a fairytale-like garden and collect the sweet nectar of the blossoms. The plumage shines in shimmering colors and a magical moment appears. In addition the dark mother-of-pearl dial underlines the fascinating interplay of colors.

For the third time Alexander Shorokhoff uses miniature painting which require exceptionally sharp eyes and dextrous hands. To complete a single miniature, the painter spends an average of 40 hours, peering attentively through the magnifier. At first the painter composes the right color palette and prepares the paint. For this kind of art the bristles are made from hair of a marten. Between 10 and 20 such brushes are necessary before the painting is finished. The base color for each element is painted uniformly to prevent the mother-of-pearl of gleam through. The base shade is applied and the other colors are progressively blended in to achieve the desired gradation and nuances.

Many extremely fine additional layers are then applied, yet the completed painting is hardly five hundredths of a millimeter thick. The small piece of art has to pass through the kiln several times to dry each layer of the paint. Repeated drying also minimizes the wet paint’s exposure to dust, which can ruin the work. The paint takes between 30 and 60 minutes to dry — depending on its thickness — in a 100°C kiln. The completed painting is finally baked for five hours to. As final step a transparent lacquer is delicately applied over the whole dial surface and then dried in the kiln for another 24 hours.

For the housing Alexander Shorokhov decided to use the rectangular shape, based on the already successful “Kandy”-models. The case back includes round, colorful shapes made from glass, where the automatic movement can be seen. The movement is the thin and extremely reliable ETA-caliber 2892. The rotor is hand-engraved and refined. The functions are easy and the most important when it comes to time measuring – hours, minutes, seconds. Here the artistic, hand-crafted dial plays the leading role.