Watches assembled by hand in Istanbul
Yelkovan
A watch is made to tell a day. Scroll, and let the day pass.
Noon
The light at its steepest and most honest. We check every dial at this hour, in daylight.
Late afternoon
Shadows lengthen, nothing is rushed. Regulating a watch takes three days at the bench.
Night
The light goes. The numerals stay.
The atelier
Yelkovan 38
In Cihangir, in a room with one window, two of us. Each watch stays in the same hands from start to finish, and no more than a hundred and twenty leave in a year.
Assembly
Five layers, one watch.
From case to crystal, it is built from the bottom up. Scroll, and it opens.
01 Case
38 mm, brushed 316L steel. 9.8 mm thin: it slips under a shirt cuff.
02 Movement
Hand-wound, 18 jewels, 21,600 beats an hour. A 42-hour power reserve; you wind it every morning, the first thing of the day.
03 Dial
Lime-plaster texture, hand-painted indices. At twelve, the atelier's window.
04 Hands
Cut and polished by hand, with lume laid in by hand. When the light goes, they tell the time.
05 Crystal
Sapphire, anti-reflective inside: the arch's light falls on the dial as it is.
It closes, it is wound. And night comes again.
Turn the dial to choose your time.
Book a visit
Come to the atelier.
Tuesday to Saturday, 11:00–19:00, by appointment. Try a watch on your wrist, in daylight.
Choose a day and a time.