Anton Suhanov put Singapore’s Merlion inside the movement of his Flamingo Singapore Edition, and he gave the creature work to do. Wind it and its tail sways from side to side, and every twelve seconds the Merlion blinks.
The edition runs to 18 pieces and makes its debut at IAMWATCH 2026 in Singapore, priced at $71,562. Suhanov belongs to the AHCI, the academy of independent watchmakers, and he invented the Flaming Balance, the oversized balance wheel mounted on the dial side of his first wristwatch.
The classic Flamingo draws its map from home, with a Y-shaped bridge tracing the Neva River through St Petersburg.
This one trades the river for a guardian.
A guardian that moves when you wind
The Merlion bridge takes the place of the Y-shaped bridge in the standard Flamingo, cut with the sweeping curves, cut-outs and sharp internal corners that run through the whole caliber. Its open mouth hangs over a winding wheel engraved with the maker’s name, and the tail fin curls below in perlage.
Start winding and the tail sways gently from side to side in front of a fixed cover bearing the manufacture’s logo. At the Merlion’s mouth, a toothed wheel from the winding train turns with the crown, its teeth passing through the opening one after another. The turning teeth become the jet of water.
A still center inside a moving ring sells the trick without a single pump or pipe.
That blink runs whether or not anyone winds the watch. The spokes of the small-seconds wheel pass behind the opening that forms the Merlion’s eye, and every twelve seconds the alignment closes the eye for a moment. Three animations, and every one of them comes from parts the movement needs anyway.
Suhanov’s standard Flamingo maps St Petersburg, the city his manufacture calls home, and the Singapore Edition keeps the habit while changing the city. One movement ends up carrying two places: the river city that raised the watchmaker and the island city that inspired the edition.
The balance wheel runs the dial
The Flaming Balance puts the balance wheel on the dial side, in the open, where a balance normally hides at the back of a movement.
It measures 15.7 millimeters across, anodized green for this edition, with luminescent inserts set into its rim. In darkness the inserts blur into one ring of light. Tilt the watch and its polished chamfers throw the highlights somewhere new.
Caliber Su26.2L is fully in-house and hand-wound, built around two barrels that hold an 84-hour reserve, three and a half days off the wrist. The indications spread around the balance: hours and minutes at 6, small seconds at 2, a day and night indicator at 10, and the power reserve back at 6 beneath its own scale.
This edition pairs a green balance wheel with green chatons in one composition, a combination the manufacture hasn’t used in the Flamingo line before. The combination is rare in traditional watchmaking, and it ties the edition’s two faces together.
Singapore, written into the small parts
Five white stars sit beneath the power reserve scale, borrowed from the flag, and they grow from left to right as the scale fills. The smallest stands beside the red sector that marks a low reserve, and the largest waits near the white sector at full wind. The reserve hand runs non-linear, doubling its speed through the final twelve hours, so the last of the reserve is easy to judge.
Red graduations on white subsidiary scales carry the flag’s two colors across the dial, and the green hands are set with ruby jewels and ruby pallets. The crown carries two ruby pallets of its own. Deeper in, the click and its spring in the winding mechanism have been redrawn with deep curves that follow tropical vines, then finished in green.
Turn the watch over and the barrel ratchet wheels spread like the canopies of the Supertrees at Gardens by the Bay, green covers at their centers and green chatons set with rubies around them. One ratchet wheel carries the edition’s inscription and the watch’s serial number, laser-engraved. The finishing stays classical underneath the theater: perlage, anglage, sandblasting and hand-polished chamfers with sharp internal corners. The case is stainless steel, 42 millimeters across and 11.5 thick, water-resistant to 30 meters, on a light-green crocodile strap. The dimensions stay quiet, and the movement does the talking.
Suhanov came to wristwatches late and by an unusual road. His Black Clock, a table clock with a three-axis tourbillon, won the AHCI Young Talent Competition in 2016. His St Petersburg Easter Egg Tourbillon Clock took the Horological Revelation Prize at the GPHG in 2025. The Flamingo, his first wristwatch, arrived in 2026 on a caliber he spent four years developing. Suhanov built the edition ahead of his return to IAMWATCH, after a first encounter with the city stayed with him.
The Singapore Edition is for the collector who wants a national symbol doing mechanical work, not printed decoration. Only 18 pieces will be made at $71,562, and the creature justifies its room in the caliber every time the crown turns.
