Russian watchmaker Konstantin Chaykin has produced a clock based around the Russian Orthodox church’s Easter celebrations.
Computus Easter, calculates the changing date of the celebration according to the defining rules of the Russian Orthodox calendar. These rules include lunar cycles, solar cycles, the indict, the epact and solar correction among others which indicates the complexity of the mechanical movement that Chaykin has created.
The case of the Computus Easter has been designed to emulate St Isaac Cathedral in Chaykin’s hometown of St Petersburg.
Chaykin has created a number of religious clocks such as his 2007 Ressurection Clock. He said: “I create timepieces related to religion because I am fascinated by the history of time-telling. There is a surprising amount of information about how mankind learned about time in all holy books. And creating timepieces to reflect this knowledge requires monumental research and work.”
But the Computus Easter is thought to be the most complicated Russian clock ever created and is the result of more than 10,000 hours of hand labour, featuring some 1,275 components.
As well as performing this complicated calculation the Computus Easter also features moonphase, power reserve, ‘time equaliser’, star map, day/date/month/year Gregorian calendar indication, including leap years.
