Raketa’s watches come from a factory in Peterhof that Peter the Great founded in 1721 to cut stone, and that now makes every part of its own movements.
How it began
During his travels through Europe, Peter the Great discovered the art of hardstone carving cultivated at the European courts. He wanted it for his new stone capital, and in 1721 he founded the Imperial Peterhof Factory next to St Petersburg. It stood right next to the emperor’s summer palace in Peterhof. Catherine the Great later sent its specialists on expeditions to the Ural and Altai mountains in search of new minerals.
The factory belonged to the emperors and could produce only on their personal instruction, so its objects became imperial gifts. In 1844 Emperor Nicholas I commissioned a table with a stone mosaic from it as a gift for Queen Victoria, and the table is still in Buckingham Palace. After the revolution the factory adapted to the needs of the people. Among its last monumental works were the Kremlin stars and Lenin’s Tomb in Moscow.
From stone to watches
In 1938 the factory started making precision ruby stones for watch movements. During the Second World War it was evacuated and made precision components for the military. In April 1945 the Kremlin ordered the creation of a watch brand, Pobeda. The brand says a Pobeda was the first watch ever to go to space, aboard the Vostok 3KA No.1 with a dog named Chernushka.
Then came Yuri Gagarin’s first space flight, and the Soviet Union created the Raketa brand in its honour. For the explorers of the 16th Soviet Antarctic Expedition, Raketa made the Polar watch. Its engineers invented a 24-hour movement so that the wearer could tell day from night, when polar days and nights last up to 6 months each. The factory also made the official watches of the Olympic Games in Moscow.
The watches
The Big Zero is a Soviet-era design: a black and white dial with oversized numerals, crowned with a big 0. Asked where it came from, the factory’s older specialists answer that it is simply more logical to start counting time from zero. The Russian Code turns its hands anticlockwise, in the direction the planets travel around the Sun. The brand says such a change is possible only at a manufacture. The Copernicus reads the time with planet-shaped hands circling an agate Sun on an aventurine dial.
The Polar lives on as a modern watch with a 24-hour dial. Each one comes with a certificate, issued by a Russian laboratory under the Arctic voluntary certification system, confirming it can be used in the harshest polar conditions.
The factory today
Following a difficult period after the fall of the Soviet Union, the factory launched a modernisation programme in 2011. Raketa says it is now one of the few watch factories in the world to produce every part of its own mechanical movement, including the hairspring. That spring is made in a Russian alloy to a precision of 0.5 microns. A Big Zero holds 242 parts, which take 8,201 operations and 103 specialists to produce.
The automatic calibre 2615 beats 18,000 times an hour, and every Raketa watch still has 24 ruby stones in its movement. The brand says all the movement decorations are made by hand at the factory, and the transparent case back shows the balance at work. Each finished watch is tested for 21 days in four positions before it goes on sale.
For its 300th anniversary, the factory returned to its stone-cutting origins. Under the name Imperial Peterhof Factory, it made a work of art that combines its historic lapidary craft with its watchmaking.
At a glance
- Founded: 1721 (the Imperial Peterhof Factory)
- Founder: Peter the Great
- Based in: Peterhof, St Petersburg, Russia
- Known for: the Big Zero, the 24-hour Polar, the anticlockwise Russian Code, an in-house movement down to the hairspring
Sources: Raketa’s own website (History, Manufacture, Movement, Contacts, and the Big Zero, Copernicus, Russian Code and Polar pages).