When a watchmaker marks a decade of rebirth and 180 years since its original founding, the temptation must be overwhelming to create something monumentally complicated, bristling with every haute horlogerie trick in the book. Czapek Genève took a different approach. For their 10th anniversary since revival, they've launched the Time Jumper, a watch that reimagines time itself through a lens that's equal parts pocket watch heritage and sci-fi fantasy.
The Time Jumper is audacious in its restraint. At its heart beats the new Calibre 10, Czapek's tenth in-house movement, and it displays only hours and minutes. The patent-pending mechanism features a jumping hour display on dual sapphire discs—one for single digits and one for tens—creating a full 24-hour register visible through a magnifying loupe set into the guilloché cover. It's a première for Czapek: a jumping hour complication that displays a complete day's cycle at a glance, with trailing minutes elegantly circling the periphery on a laser-coloured blue disc.
A Flying Saucer on Your Wrist
The Time Jumper is available in two limited editions. The stainless steel version, limited to 100 pieces, features a white gold guilloché inlay on the case cover, and there’s also a 3N 18K yellow gold edition, limited to 30 pieces with matching gold guillochage. Both versions feature blue rubber straps with matching pin buckles—stainless steel for the steel model and 18k yellow gold for the gold version.
The 40.5 mm case is where heritage collides with imagination. Drawing inspiration from François Czapek's 19th-century pocket watches, designer Thomas Funder has created something that feels beamed from both the past and the future simultaneously. The half-hunter case design serves as both a functional cover and an artistic canvas. When closed, it conceals all but the hour indication, visible through that central magnifying window. Flip it open via the pusher at 6 o'clock, and the entire Calibre 10.1 movement reveals itself beneath a box sapphire crystal.
The case itself is a study in curves. There are virtually no straight lines here. Every surface flows: the oval pusher, the rounded lug ends, even the crown's grip notches nestle close to the case body. At 10.5 mm in thickness—12.35 mm including the domed crystal—, it wears with surprising elegance despite its unconventional proportions.
But the pièce de résistance is the guillochage covering the case top. Created by Czapek's longtime partner, Metalem, this three-dimensional pattern creates an optical illusion of infinite depth, much like staring into a black hole's event horizon. It's an evolution of the Singularité guilloché developed for the Antarctique Tourbillon, executed here with hypnotic effect. Each one is hand-made, requiring specialized skills that border on a lost art.
Calibre 10: The Foundation of the Next Decade
While the Time Jumper introduces Calibre 10.1, the significance extends beyond this single watch. Czapek has designed Calibre 10 as a foundational architecture for the next decade of complications. The 30 mm diameter, 6.13 mm thick movement is self-winding via a central rotor in recycled 950 platinum. The movement beats at a frequency of 28,800 vph with a 60-hour power reserve from a single barrel. It comprises 275 parts, including 44 jewels, finished to haute horlogerie standards with sandblasted and circular-brushed rhodium-plated bridges contrasting against blackened plates.
What makes Calibre 10 special isn't just its current jumping hour application. Czapek has engineered it to be compact and adaptable enough to fit cases as small as 36 mm, while hosting entirely different complications in future iterations.
On the Wrist & Price
Only 180 movements of Calibre 10.1 will ever be produced, commemorating the 180th anniversary of the original Czapek maison being founded in Geneva in 1845. Beyond the 130 pieces allocated to the steel and gold limited editions, 40 movements remain for special projects, including 10 fully bespoke pieces, which can be obtained by contacting the Czapek boutique directly. Water resistance is rated at 30 meters, which is perfectly reasonable for a dress watch with a hinged cover mechanism. Both sapphire crystals—front glass box and display case back—feature anti-reflective treatment for optimal legibility.
Sticker Price CHF 42,000 for steel—approx USD 52,700— and CHF 64,000 for gold—approx USD 80,300. More information on Czapek & Cie can be found here.
