Christiaan van der Klaauw ‘White Elephant’ 18/25

Christiaan van der Klaauw enjoyed his education at the Instrument makers school, founded in 1901 by Nobel laureate prof. Heike Kamerlingh Onnes. In the lovely Frysian village of Joure, Van der Klaauw started designing and developing his own handmade astronomical movements in the seventies.

With the Pendule, Van der Klaauw won the prestigious medaille d’or in Basel in 1992, settling him among the watch making elite. In the late nineties, Van der Klaauw designed one of his most innovative movements, the Planetarium. It was the world’s first planetarium to fit in a watch.

Sometimes Christiaan made a series of watches like this square one, only 25 pieces made. The abbreviationT.W.E. stands for The White Elephant Group stems from the hobby of Adri Strating, collecting elephant figurines.