Chronometre Contemporain II

Rexhep Rexhepi was born in Kosovo in 1987. In 1998, at eleven years old, he fled during the war and joined his father in Switzerland. At fourteen he signed an apprenticeship contract. At fifteen he was training at Patek Philippe. He was one of the most talented students in the program. Patek Philippe's training is famously rigorous. Five years of bench work under master watchmakers in the Vallee de Joux tradition. When he completed it, Rexhepi was given the unusual distinction of signing his name on his graduation piece, a pocket watch chronometer. That does not happen. Patek apprentices produce a timepiece as their final exam. The ones that pass go into the archive. The ones that are exceptional get the student's name engraved. His was exceptional. He spent three years at BNB Concept working on tourbillons and high complications, then roughly eighteen months at F.P. Journe, where he absorbed the philosophy that changed everything for him: one watchmaker, one watch. The same person assembles, finishes, adjusts, and handles after-sales. Journe's Geneva manufacture operates on this principle. Every watch passes through one pair of hands from start to finish. That is impossibly inefficient by any manufacturing standard and it is the entire point. Rexhepi took this philosophy and compressed it further. At Akrivia, the watchmaker who assembles your movement is the one who will service it decades from now. In 2012, at twenty-five, he founded Atelier Akrivia in Geneva's Old Town. He owns 100% of the company.

CC2 platinum: official press photo, black grand feu enamel on brown suede strap

The Chronometre Contemporain II is the watch that defines Rexhepi the way the Chronometre Souverain defines Journe and the Simplicity defines Dufour. A time-only watch elevated by a single complication that looks deceptively simple but tells anyone who understands watchmaking exactly what they are looking at. The complication is seconde morte, deadbeat seconds. The seconds hand does not sweep. It jumps, once per second, in a discrete tick that looks identical to a quartz watch. That visual simplicity conceals one of the most demanding mechanical exercises in watchmaking.

The deadbeat seconds subdial: each tick is one discrete jump powered by its own train

Here is why deadbeat seconds is difficult. A conventional going train delivers energy continuously. The escapement beats, the hands move, everything flows. Deadbeat seconds requires a sudden high-energy impulse once per second to jerk the seconds hand forward, while the escapement continues its steady oscillation undisturbed. If the impulse energy bleeds back into the balance wheel, it disturbs the amplitude and the watch loses accuracy. Most watchmakers who attempt deadbeat seconds use a star-and-flirt mechanism on a single going train, which compromises the balance. Some add a secondary hairspring reservoir. Some use a remontoir d'egalite, which is elegant but adds enormous complexity.

Rose gold lifestyle: the white grand feu enamel in natural light

Rexhepi's solution is architecturally radical. The RRCC02 caliber has two completely separate mainspring barrels and two independent going trains. One powers the escapement and timekeeping. The second powers only the deadbeat seconds mechanism. The impulse energy of the jumping seconds never touches the balance wheel. Twin barrels, twin trains, inside a 38mm case at 8.75mm thick. The movement is 31.2mm in diameter with 214 components and 33 jewels, beating at 21,600 vibrations per hour with 82 hours of power reserve. Manual wind. The five-pointed star wheel rotates gradually, and after exactly one second's worth of beats, one arm releases a tensioned spring lever called a flirt. The flirt swings through a complete arc, drives the seconds hand forward by exactly one second, and is arrested by the next arm. Pull the crown and the seconds hand hacks and resets to zero via a heart-shaped cam and reset hammer.

Purple hands fired at 800 degrees, a Rexhepi detail no one else does at this temperature

The case is available in platinum or 18K rose gold. The platinum version gets a black grand feu enamel dial with a grey enamel seconds subdial featuring a hand-engraved gratte pattern. The rose gold gets a translucent white grand feu enamel dial with hands fired at 800 degrees Celsius, producing a heat-treated purple rather than the standard blue tempering. That purple is a Rexhepi signature. No one else does it at that temperature.

Grand feu enamel is not a coating. It is powdered glass and mineral pigments fused to a metal substrate at kiln temperatures. Rexhepi co-founded a dedicated enamel workshop called Emailleurs de la Cite with Florent Olivier Martin, steps from the Akrivia atelier on Grand-Rue in Geneva's Old Town. The workshop opened in 2024 and employs four experienced enamellists. The process involves grinding the frit by mortar and pestle, washing it multiple times with distilled water, painting it by hand in thin layers onto a gold-palladium alloy dial blank, then firing in a vacuum furnace. A counter-enamel layer goes on the back to prevent warping. The cycle repeats over ten hours of combined application and firing. Then six hours of polishing against progressively finer wheels to eliminate the orange-peel texture of fired enamel and achieve a glassy, mirror-like surface. The rejection rate is extreme. One impurity, one air bubble, one humidity spike, and the dial is ruined. Grand feu means great fire. The name refers to the kiln temperature, typically between 800 and 900 degrees Celsius. At these temperatures, the powdered glass melts and fuses permanently to the metal substrate. The color is not on the surface. It is in the material. That is why grand feu enamel does not fade, does not discolor, does not age. A dial made this way in 1820 looks the same today as the day it was fired. A dial made this way in 2024 will look the same in 2224. That is the value proposition of enamel, and it is why Rexhepi co-founded an entire workshop to control the process.

Anglage macro: the beveled surfaces are wider than the bridge flanks themselves

The hand finishing on the RRCC02 is among the most extensive in contemporary watchmaking. The movement has 140 inward angles on the gear train wheels, every one individually beveled and mirror-polished by hand. Inward angles are the hardest to execute because a straight file cannot reach into concave corners. Each requires a custom-shaped tool. The anglage on the bridges is so wide that the beveled surface is broader than the straight-grained flanks of the bridges themselves, a proportion that borders on excess but reads as absolute confidence. The seconds wheel bridge and balance cock are entirely black polished, poli noir, a mirror finish that requires progressively finer abrasives and tolerates no scratches, no ripples, no rounding of edges. The plates and bridges are German silver.

Cal. RRCC02 platinum: twin going trains visible through the exhibition caseback

Rexhepi's workshop occupies four premises in Geneva's Old Town, three of them steps apart on the historic Grand-Rue. A fourth satellite space houses CNC micro-machining equipment. As of 2024, Akrivia employs twenty people including eight watchmakers. Each watch is assembled by a single watchmaker from start to finish. The cases are made in-house under Jean-Pierre Hagmann, a master case maker whom Rexhepi brought out of retirement in 2019 after acquiring his workshop. Each CC2 case is built from fifteen individual components hand-soldered to the case band. The lugs are not cast as part of the case middle. They are individually shaped and soldered on. The crown guard, the bezel, the caseback frame, each is a separate piece joined by hand. Jean-Pierre Hagmann is one of the last master case makers working in the traditional Geneva method. Rexhepi brought him out of retirement because the alternative was sending cases to an external supplier and losing control over the most tactile element of the watch. When you pick up a CC2, the case is what you feel first. The edges between polished and brushed surfaces are hand-finished to a sharpness that CNC cannot achieve.

The Akrivia atelier on Grand-Rue, Geneva's Old Town

The CC2 is limited to fifty pieces in platinum and fifty in rose gold. One hundred total, produced over multiple years at Akrivia's annual output of roughly forty watches across all references. Demand is approximately twenty times production capacity.

CC2 Rubis: baguette-cut ruby indices on white grand feu enamel, 10 pieces total

The CC1 came first in 2018 and won the GPHG Men's Watch Prize that year. The CC2 won the same prize in 2022. Two GPHG category wins for two editions of essentially the same philosophical statement: a time-only watch where the craft is the complication. The CC2 is not an upgrade of the CC1. None of the components are interchangeable. The frequency went from 18,000 to 21,600 vibrations per hour. The power reserve went from 100 hours on a single barrel to 82 hours on twin barrels. The case went from 9.5mm thick to 8.75mm, thinner despite adding the deadbeat seconds mechanism. Rexhepi has said no CC1 part fits a CC2.

The Rubis on the wrist: ruby indices catching warm light against the enamel

Beyond the standard platinum and rose gold, Rexhepi has produced two variant editions that push the CC2 further. The CC2 Rubis is limited to ten pieces in rose gold, each with baguette-cut ruby indices at the ten-minute intervals against the white grand feu enamel. Ten watches, reserved for long-term supporters of Rexhepi, not available through any waiting list or allocation. The CC2 Diamant replaces the ruby indices with diamonds. Both variants use the same RRCC02 caliber and twin-train deadbeat seconds. The stone-set variants do not change the mechanical story. They change the light story. Rubies absorb and scatter warm light. Diamonds refract everything. Against the depth of grand feu enamel, the effect is unlike anything a painted or printed dial can produce.

CC2 Diamant: diamond indices, the dial macro showing each stone set into the enamel

The comparisons to Dufour and Journe are inevitable and earned. The Dufour Simplicity is 206 total pieces, production ended, auction results now exceeding a million dollars. The Journe Chronometre Souverain runs a higher annual volume at roughly 900 watches across all references. The CC2 sits between them in production and above them in complication. Neither the Simplicity nor the standard Souverain has deadbeat seconds. What all three share is the conviction that a time-only watch, executed at the highest level of finishing, is the purest expression of what an independent watchmaker can do. No tourbillon to distract. No perpetual calendar to justify the complexity. Just time, told with absolute precision and crafted with obsessive care.

The Diamant on the wrist

This is the watch I would point someone to if they wanted to understand why independent watchmaking matters. Not because it is the most expensive or the most complicated. Because it is the most distilled. The seconds hand jumps once per second and that single mechanical gesture, powered by its own dedicated train, finished to a level that borders on irrational, tells you everything about who made it and why. A refugee from Kosovo who arrived in Switzerland with nothing, trained at the highest level the industry offers, then built something that the industry's most experienced collectors now compare to Dufour and Journe. The CC2 is not just a watch. It is evidence that mastery is not inherited. It is built.

Rose gold movement: the twin barrels and the finishing quality from the caseback