Nicholas Bowman-Scargill wants to draw your attention to the Alliance 01 jumping hour watch. It is a model launched earlier this year and made in partnership between Fears, the watch brand he founded, and fellow British watch company Christopher Ward, for the Alliance of British Watch and Clockmakers. This young organisation, launched three years ago, has so far brought together some 73 brands with the aim of promoting the nation’s watch and clockmaking around the world. It champions British provenance and job–creation for the sector in the UK. Funds from sales of the watch will go to this end.
“And just look at that watch,” enthuses Scargill-Bowman. “It’s just weird, in a good way. There’s all that negative space, the cyclops hour window, and yet it is the watch that everybody picks up. Its design is playful but stops short of being outrageous. And I think that’s a quality specific to British design. There’s an understatement to it, with very classic proportions, but also with an irreverence.”
Scargill-Bowman concedes that to ascribe a specific design ethos to a nation is to stereotype – “but I’m ready to own that,” he laughs. It puts the aesthetic of British-designed watches – sometimes also part-made and, much less often, more or less entirely made in the UK – into the realm of the Mini Cooper or the Jaguar E-Type, the Spitfire or Concorde, the Burberry trench- coat, Dr. Marten’s boot or the Anglepoise lamp. It is a disparate bunch of icons but maybe there is something in the idea that a certain sensibility lies behind them all, as might be behind the more sensuous, more pop classics of, say, Italian design.
Idiosyncratic Visions
“It is hard to define but I think there’s a real creative drive [to British watchmaking now], an approach that says, for example, ‘here’s a new material, what can we do with it?’ rather than ‘what does the marketing department say we should be making now?’,” suggests the watchmaker Fiona Kruger, who’s British but based in France, and focuses her practice as an artist into watchmaking. “I think watchmaking often falls back on established ideas of how watches should be designed. I think British watchmaking leans towards designing watches that don’t already exist.”
“The British aesthetic is definitely a big part of what we do,” argues Roger Smith, often considered the world’s greatest living watchmaker – every component of his watches, of which only 18 are made a year, is hand-made in-house. “There’s a 3D depth to the designs, and a relative simplicity to the decoration of the movements, that echoes the historical past of watchmaking in the UK – particularly the English pocket watches of the 1820s and 1830s – that I couldn’t see elsewhere in watches and which has become a signature.”
“I have a strong cohort of clients who believe that ‘British is best’ because of the country’s reputation as the home of many luxury goods,” Smith adds. “I think as a nation we’re great creators and like to do things differently. And that’s to the advantage in watch design now. British watchmaking in the broadest sense is very much on the up. The challenge of course is to take it to the next level.”
What Collectors Are After
Certainly, the last decade has seen a transformation in the development of a watch industry in the UK. It is in revival mode, with a boom in new brands – some of which have already come and gone, while others have found a marketable distinction. Some are offering a kind of radical classical style – from Dent, with its nods to London’s landmark Big Ben, for which it also created the dial; others something bolder and fresher – from the retro sportiness of Farer to the outlandish colour palette of Studio Underdog.
Being British-made was, says Dave Brailsford, of clockmakers-turned- watchmakers Garrick, the brand’s raison d’être from day one. And that, he says, has actually proven a profitable decision, such that three-quarters of its watches are sold abroad. “Britishness just has a distinct appeal to some markets, and in Asia in particular,” he argues. “I think the instability of the pandemic period – when getting hold of a lot of Swiss watches was very hard – has encouraged collectors to be more open- minded, to look to other markets the likes of the British one. And now I’m seeing young watchmakers here who, three to five years down the line, are aiming to hand-make watches because that’s what collectors are after now.”
The likes of Garrick, with its in-house calibre and artful finishing, are perhaps a reminder that, if you go back far enough, Britain was once a world leader in horology. Although the historical record is not always precise, 17th-century English scientist Robert Hooke lays claim to having invented the balance spring; Daniel Quare created the first repeating watch movement in 1680; in 1730 John Harrison invented the marine chronometer and in 1755 Thomas Mudge came up with the lever escapement – an integral part of mechanical watchmaking still.
The invention of the chronometer in the 18th century is attributed to Thomas Young and the self-winding mechanism to John Harwood in 1923, even if it was first taken to market by Fortis and Blancpain. In 1974, George Daniels – to whom Roger Smith was apprentice – created the co- axial escapement, latterly popularised by Omega. Smith has made his own advances on that (links between the Swiss and the British are strewn across this article, including the key participation of Andreas Strehler and his firm Uhr Teil AG in the development of that in-house Garrick calibre; Farer touts the Swiss Made label on the dial; it is not our intention to suggest that watchmakers outside Switzerland are keenly building up the entire value chain to produce watches in their own markets – only China, Hong Kong and Japan have this sort of infrastructure, but more countries are getting in on the act).
From Bust to Boom
“There’s definitely a watch enthusiast that appreciates that Britain was once world leading in watchmaking, that many of its innovators, in mechanisms as in the designs too, were British. I mean, even Rolex started out here,” notes Paul Pinchbeck, director of British makers Harold Pinchbeck, which can trace its roots back to another innovator, Christopher Pinchbeck. Curiously, this early 18th century clockmaker was the inventor of an eponymous alloy, a cheap substitute for gold. “A lot of manufacturing here became diluted through the latter half of the 20th century, not just watchmaking, and I do think something [ineffable] is lost by using components from abroad, even if there’s nothing wrong with the results as such”.
Indeed, by the late 1800s British makers were exporting 200,000 watches a year and, arguably, that number would have continued to grow to rival the Swiss industry were it not for World Wars I and II: while Switzerland’s neutrality meant it was able to continue developing and manufacturing wristwatches (and selling them to both sides), in both instances British industry had to pivot to making armaments and military equipment, including watches but ignoring the civilian market. While some makers persisted until the 1970s – most notably Smiths, whose vintage military pieces are especially collectible – most fell by the wayside.
Some, however, have parlayed that wartime connection into success today: five years ago Vertex, a British manufacturer and one of the so-called ‘Dirty Dozen’ military watches, was relaunched by Don Cochrane, the grandson of one of the brand’s original leading figures. It opens a London store this spring.
“It is curious how there’s been this acceleration in British watches over the last 10 years,” says Cochrane, who notes that at the last Worn & Wound New York exhibition he attended, a third of the brands showing were British. “Of course, the UK is not alone in seeing a proliferation of micro–brands. It is happening in France too, for example. But I think what connects a lot of the British ones is that they’re driven by the story behind them. There’s a narrative that appeals.”
Origin Stories
Indeed, there is some debate as to whether the provenance of the physical parts really matters. Giles Schofield, founder of British watch brand Schofield – whose cases are made and finished in the UK, with hands, dials and crowns imported – argues that there was a time when “waving the Union Jack [the national flag] around was a badge of honour” and helped generate sales. During the 1990s, for example, there was a government-led push on British goods and culture dubbed ‘Cool Britannia’. “But that same Britishness has, I think, yet to be defined in the watch space, at least not in the way that Britishness is still important if you’re considering, say, men’s hand–made shoes, or cutlery.”
This is why, he says, he treads a middle line: his Black Lamp model, for example, is 95 percent made in the UK – a fact once trumpeted on the brand’s website – “and I’d like to make more in the UK for practical reasons, because it is closer to the design process and easier to articulate what can be complex ideas”. But although he put some origin stamps on his dials in the early days of the brand – “I was too nervous not to then,” he says – now he does not bother. On occasion he has jokily stamped ‘Made in Nice Places’ or ‘Made in Sussex’ (a region of southern England).
But perhaps there is a renewed enthusiasm for bringing watchmaking home. Harold Pinchbeck, for example, currently uses a Swiss movement for its watches but plans to use an English one, “even though they’re rare, made in small numbers and so tend to be expensive,” as Paul Pinchbeck notes. Struthers – the company founded by husband-and-wife team Craig and Rebecca Struthers, both antique watch restorers – is now developing its own in-house movement, Project 248, with an improved version of the long side- lined English lever escapement, English rocking bar keyless work, behind a top plate inspired by an 1880 English pocket watch “in the traditional English style”. Englishness, clearly, is front and centre.
Investing In The Future
“It is true that a lot of people don’t care where a watch is made. But I think our customers do,” argues the aptly–named Giles English, co–founder of Bremont, which, with the exception of some components, the hands particularly, makes its watches in- house. “Being British, I think it then also makes more sense for us to work with other British companies – the likes of Martin-Baker or Williams – as we have done. There is a British watch industry historically and a new, fledgling one developing now, albeit slowly – to manufacture in the UK, rather than use components from Switzerland or the Far East, takes time and millions in investment, so it is not surprising that the incentive to make in the UK isn’t there for many of the new brands.”
Millions is exactly what Bremont, which last year marked its 20th birthday, has recently acquired. Some 18 months on from opening a 35,000 sqf manufacturing centre in the UK, it has this year taken on a USD 59 million investment to lay further foundations for watchmaking there.
Money is not the only challenge. There is also the comparatively tight legal restrictions around claims to be ‘made in the UK’ (think of the complexities around the Swiss Made term). And marshalling component manufacturers must sometimes feel like more effort than it is worth. It is why Giles Schofield finds himself working with 32 different suppliers, which is complicated but, he says, at least avoids the homogeneity seen in other parts of the watch industry.
“The issue with watchmaking is that it seems the tolerances required are alien to everyone outside of watchmaking, and that means sometimes [if you don’t want to have your watches made abroad] you have to learn to do these things yourself,” explains Lewis Heath, founder of AnOrdain watches, which stands out for its in-house enamelled dials and for which there’s currently a healthy five-year order book. “I think the ‘British card’ is the last one to play. You have to have something more substantial that sets you apart. But as the critical mass of British brands grows there will be a sharing of resources that will help the sector create more substance.”
Meeting In The Middle
And none of this is to say that manufacturing in the UK is not possible without either the exceptional situation of a Roger Smith or the scale achieved by the likes of a Bremont. Take the Loomes Original (seen here), or the Robin, for example, both models from British watchmakers and restorers Loomes. Both are made entirely in the UK, largely from components supplied by companies new to watches. Achieving this was a seven-year-long project but, stresses Loomes’ Robert Loomes, who is also chairman of the British Horological Institute, it can be done. Indeed, Bedford Dials – normally a maker of pressure, temperature and automotive dials, and one of the companies he has worked with – has since started making dials for several Swiss watch companies.
“The fact is that there are specialist firms here who can make, say, jewels, or a hairspring, if you ask them to. It is just the scale of the venture that puts other watchmakers off I think, and the expense,” says Loomes, who reckons using British suppliers resulted in his watches being perhaps eight times more expensive than they otherwise could have been, an expense that would of course be greatly reduced if manufacturing in larger volumes.
“It took forever to find a company that could make screws and in the end we used a specialist medical equipment supplier, which made each screw insanely expensive, about £8, when we could have maybe bought a bag of thousands from China for that,” Loomes chuckles. “And, yes, there were companies that wouldn’t just make 50 components for me. But then there were others who didn’t take on the work for the money but because they found it interesting. It was a big and complex project. But I think we proved our point.”
This story was first seen on WOW’s Spring 2023 Issue.
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