Is It Art? The Rexhep Rexhepi RRCHF Flyback Chronograph

This has been an interesting year for chronographs, despite the fact that there are not many net new chronograph models on the market so far (I don’t know how many more we might expect, since it’s already halfway through the year). One of them was of course the TAG Heuer Evergraph, which introduced the first really new chronograph control system since the cam and lever system was patented by Landeron in the 1930s. Another was a chronograph which could not be more different from the Evergraph technically, aesthetically, and in its goals and that is the first chronograph from Rexhep Rexhepi, the widely praised new RRCHF Flyback Chronograph.

The Evergraph is a masterpiece of engineering; its flexible (“compliant,” in engineer-speak) control system is best understood as a kind of complex lever, which snaps back and forth between different shapes which determine whether the chrono is running, stopped, or reset to zero. The RRCHF on the other hand appears to be a resolutely traditional chronograph wristwatch. It has been made entirely of traditional materials and using almost entirely traditional methods, excluding basic automated manufacturing methods found universally in watchmaking, from the most industrial to the most exclusive. Its technical solutions likewise appear to be completely traditional and it would be easy to admire the beauty of the watch, but dismiss it as uninteresting technically thanks to the – at first glance – conventional watchmaking.

Hands On With The Rexhep Rexhepi RRCHF Chronograph

I finally had a chance to see the watch in person last month. I’d arrived a day early for Watches & Wonders 2026 and one of the major reasons – aside from the fact that I do not bounce back from jet lag the way I used to – was to see the watch that I like all of us had heard so much about. On many occasions in the back of your mind when you’re looking at a very expensive and very exclusive watch, is the realization that you’re not a client for the piece, both in terms of availability and in terms of price; for the RRCHF, exclusivity on both counts is the reality for almost all watch enthusiasts. However, the value the watch delivers is not dependent on ownership.

The RRCHF is deceptive. In person, it is a rather quiet piece; certainly it is not a flex anywhere outside of a small group of collectors, although the number of people who might recognize it is certainly much greater today than it would have been before the internet and social media fueled rise of interest in independent watchmaking. Still, though, it is while a miniature masterpiece, I think closer to a piece of perfectly composed and performed chamber music than to a performance of a popular orchestral piece – in impact it’s much more a Bach violin sonata than Beethoven’s 5th Symphony.

It is however, a watch that takes its time, and takes time, to understand. The design of the watch overall, and of the movement especially, represents an extension of a core philosophy in design and movement layout which is specific to the watch and to Rexhepi’s previous work.

The two considerations relevant to the chronograph, are the extent to which it is a canvas for demonstrating traditional movement hand finishing, and the extent to which the inherently asymmetrical layout of a chronograph movement can be adapted to the rigorous bilateral symmetry Rexhepi has followed in his previous watches.

These two considerations can be understood on a deeper level. The purpose of using a design which is a canvas for demonstrating fine hand finishing is not just to show off those techniques, which can be found in other watches. As techniques, they’re found in the same basic vocabulary in other high end hand finished watches and you can tick them off on your fingers: anglage, perlage, Geneva stripes, polished flanks, black polished screw heads and slots, polished countersinks for the jewels, and so on. However, just listing the techniques misses something a little bit subtler. The techniques are there not just as things in themselves. Instead, they have been done in such a way as to show how they can be used to produce a specific overall effect in this particular watch.

The finish doesn’t exist in isolation; instead, it emphasizes the structural rigor of the movement layout. At the same time, its lyricism softens that rigor and makes it feel approachable and even seductive, rather than letting it remain an abstraction. Even the size of the movement jewels is in harmonious visual proportion, while at the same time of course reflecting the mechanical forces found at each point in the going and chronograph trains.

In our Introducing story we looked at how the movement layout evolved from the Chronomètre Contemporaine, through the Antimagnetique, and particularly how Rexhepi adapted the reset to zero seconds hand setting mechanism from the Antimagnetique to the RRCHF. Essentially, that mechanism was adapted from the Antimagnetique to the Chronograph for several reasons, but a big one was that doing so helped preserve the signature symmetry of Rexhepi’s movement design. This technical decision also ensured continuity between the final visuals of the specifics of finishing in the chronograph, with the preceding watches.

The RRCHF Chronograph exists in a relatively new kind of luxury watch environment, where such watches are sometimes regarded as a kind of financial asset class and where value retention and appreciation in value are critical parts of the conversation at the high end. This is true of several other categories of high level collecting – automotive and fine art especially (if you follow fine art auctions, you’re probably already aware that a Jackson Pollock “drip” painting, No. 7A, which the artist painted in 1948 and which is a landmark work, sold recently at Christie’s for 181 million dollars). At the same time, for a wider audience, ownership is not necessary for appreciation, albeit appreciation is difficult when its object is in private hands and not visible to the general public.

Still, understanding some of the actual outcomes of the application of fine watchmaking techniques and crafts, and not just noting that they’re there in any given watch, gives you a richer experience of watchmaking overall. Understanding how and why things were done the way they were done, and formulating informed opinions on the whys and wherefores, means you look at every chronograph in a fresh way – at every watch in a fresh way, really.

In the fine art world, we do have something we don’t yet have in the watch world, which is the presence of significant bodies of work in museums and galleries which are publicly accessible; I can go see Pollock’s Autumn Rhythm (No. 30) here in New York any day the Met is open; the same with Monet’s monumental paintings of his gardens at Giverny, at the Modern. There are museums of watchmaking in Switzerland, of course, but it would be pretty amazing to see a well curated themed exhibition of watches at an institution like the Met or the Modern, and it would go a long way towards providing something I think collecting, and the community, could use: an acknowledgment that watches have over the last fifty years, risen to the point where collectively, they merit being taken as seriously as any other objects of design to which real creativity has been joined up with real mechanical prowess.

Both fine art and watches have dynamic collector and auction worlds; both can be very valuable asset classes. What fine art has that fine watchmaking maybe still lacks a bit, is a presence in public discourse as a manifestation of culture, which fine art has via museums and a centuries-long corpus of aesthetic theory and critical engagement. Things could change, though. Being an asset class and being a cultural touchstone don’t have to be mutually exclusive.