I am quite sure that the vast majority of you who are not from Russia have never heard of Tsedro watch company. And even though I collect soviet and Russian watches for quite a while now, even I was not familiar with this brand until recently either.
Company Tsedro was established in 2005 by Dimitrij Cedro (Tsedro). Company specialized in production of highly decorated hand made watches where basically each watch is unique. For watch cases they use titanium, silver or gold. In the beginning almost entire production was based on Poljot (later Maktime) 3105 hand winding movement (famous 3133 chronograph movement without chrono module), but now their collection is mainly based on Swiss movements.
Saying all that you can imagine that their watches are quite specific, unusual and quite expensive. Checking their collection I must admit that their decorations of the dial are often walking on the edge of my acceptance and what is considered a good taste for me. A lot of their dials are just too kitschy... But - as you know - you can never judge taste of another person. What is ugly for me is great for someone else and vice versa...
You can check all the details about the company and their present collections in their web site www.tsedro.ru
Well, I was able to find a watch which is in the acceptable price range for me, shows all the craftsman work on the dial but even though still not too kitschy and in addition to all that it also has an interesting history hommage. Since it uses Poljot 3105 movement and not some of the Swiss movements, this is another plus for this watch - it fits well to my collection of Russian watches.
So, the mentioned watch is watch Tank from the Revolver III series.
Diameter of the watch is 44m, case is made of titanium. Knowing that watch uses Poljot 3105 movement, one would expect small second dial at 9.00 but in this model second hand is deliberately missing (other watches from Revolver III series in general have also the small second!).
At the first sight watch or better say dial does not look anything special. It's a some kind of partially transparent dial which shows few main movement parts. And that is what I like in this watch. Only the closer look shows that in fact dial is fully hand made engraved.
As said, model name is Tank. If you look carefully you will notice a silhouette of tank between 2.00 and 3.00. By my opinion this watch is dedicated to famous soviet tank T-34 from the word war II, one of the main actors of the biggest tank battle in the history - battle at Kursk.
Now, it's time for some close look pictures of the dial.
Even more interesting is the back side of the watch, which is really filled with decorations. So - majority of the decorations are on the back side and not on the front. What is again - at least for me - a good thing. Highly decorated but still not showing off to the world. But even on the back side decoration is not obvious and the first look from the "normal" distance does not reveal at once that there is something special.
So, again, let's take a closer look now.
The most obvious and also the most controversial decoration is inside the wheel - a sickle and hammer inside a five-pointed star, so classic emblems of the former Soviet Union. I know this emblems might offend some of you, but in this case those emblems here are not to celebrate communism itself but to celebrate "great victory" in the WWII.
The T-34 is also present on the back, this time clearly in the action, passing tank barriers in the spruce forest. And to support tank penetration behind the enemy lines, there are also three airplanes (at least to me seems most probably Lavočkin LA-7 model).
Of course watch is primarily still a watch and not a piece of art. So it is important, that it fits well to a wrist. 44mm is perfect size for my wrist, but I believe 42mm would make this watch even more attractive. Titanium offers comfort due to the small weight. Movement 3105 is robust but has it's limitation in the precision.
Watch comes in a well done wooden box. I think that this leather "racing like" strap which is by default on the watch, does not fit well to the general look of the watch and I will replace that with some more classic style leather strap soon. I also have to check which color of the strap will be the best, I think black is not the right one.
You might wonder, what is the cost for this kind of the watch. I was able to get the watch at www.smirs.com (they are official Tsedro retailer, and they were again very helpful offering me some additional pictures before buying not just of this but also other Tsedro watches I was interesting in) for 60.000 RUB (cca. 660 EUR), of course I had to pay also additional import taxes. To be quite honest - compared to other prices of the Russian watches nowadays and considered all the manual work here - not so much at all.
It is for sure not the watch I would buy for an every day's use and if I would not be interested in fulfilling my Russian collection, I probably would not invest in it. But at the end of the day I am quite satisfied with it and I will for sure wear it within rotation of my watches. But the most interesting thing that this watch can offer is taking the magnifying glass and looking all the smallest details on the both sides of the watch.
Add comment
Comments