Spending a short time wearing the Cyrus Kambys was a much different experience to wearing the Klepcys Solotempo. I concluded that the latter is the perfect everyday watch, but the former is a definite talking piece. The minute that you strap this 50mm wide piece to your wrist, your eye is drawn to three different intriguing elements, in addition to the hours and minutes, which are displayed with skeletonized central hands with red tips.
Taking up the entire right-hand side of the Kambys is the unique power reserve display, which looks like it has been ripped off an abacus. As you wind the watch (the Kambys is manually wound and was first presented back in 2012 at a time when such watches were much less common), you can see the individual steel barrels move up the vertical shaft. The upper two barrels account for two days each, while the bottom one is equivalent to three days. The position of the three barrels thus gives you a good idea of what’s left of the seven-day power reserve in a playful manner that helps you appreciate the passing of time and the operation of the movement much better than a simple hand indication could. It also belies a complex mechanism that is used to move each of these barrels, as those well-versed in watchmaking complications will note by the five rubies adorning the separate bridge for this function.
For the seconds, look to the bottom left of the dial, where another separate bridge partially conceals an innovative and complex way of counting out the subdivisions of a minute. At first it would appear that the minute has simply been divided into three, with a separate hand to indicate each of these 20 seconds. Each of the hands is, however, of a different length and inclined by eight degrees. The visible seconds wheel of the movement creates a visual, as well as mechanical, connection with the beating movement.
At the top left you can see a disc that is held in place by a three-spoked bridge, with two-thirds of the disc covered by a grille. What appears in the visible third is up to you and is controlled by pressing the crown (the one at 3 o’clock, not the one at 9 o’clock, which is purely for symmetry of design and is a signature of Cyrus). You can choose between the company logo (which you can replace with your own touch of personalization if you prefer), the limited-edition number (only 188 of each model are available) or the mysterious decoration of the Cyrus coin, which is one of the oldest coins known and dates back to 500 BC. The stylized image shows the confronting heads of a lion and bull.
Despite its size, the watch wears comfortably thanks to its curved case and integrated rubber strap (complete with its own integrated mini-abacus that is perfect for the fidget), as well as the lightweight titanium case. Timekeeping is provided by the in-house Calibre 7778 movement developed in conjunction with Jean-François Mojon. Consisting of 290 components and no fewer than 50 rubies, this manually-wound movement can be seen beating at a frequency of 3 Hz through a sapphire crystal case back.
