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English watches that remain 'Man - made': Interviewing Roger Smith and George Daniels.

English watches that remain 'Man - made': Interviewing Roger Smith and George Daniels.

[George Daniels and Roger Smith at work in Daniel's workshop]

At the time of the tea salons of London being the hive of business and academic endeavour, the area around Fleet Street in London resembled the watch industry that is Switzerland today. Components for watches were manufactured in separate workshops (plates, pinions, cogs, and hands) then assembled by a watchmaker. The names of Tompion, Graham, Mudge, were both held in scientific and artistic acclaim.



England produced watches that were the envy of the world. Time made you master of distance and space, and England was master of the seas that separated her from her dominions. At the same time, as new discoveries were made across the oceans, the academic minds of the day wrestled with the value of objects. Adam Smith reasoned the problem as the diamond/water paradox: why was it that water (essential for life) was almost free, but diamonds, of no use to life and survival, were so expensive. Adam Smith reasoned that the intrinsic value of a good was directly related to the amount of labour required to produce it. The watchmakers could produce better, less expensive watches because of the ability to break down the individual component parts of manufacture. The use of machines (composed of past labour) would cheapen the product still further.

In his essayed debates with Adam Smith, David Hume reasoned that the belief rather than reason governed human action. It was your belief that something does exist, would happen, can occur that makes it so; otherwise, humans are merely a mass of sensations. For Smith, reason governed; human action in self interest would lead in aggregate to the betterment of all. The problem is that self-interest leads to everyone wanting more for less; without the belief part of what is possible, there would be no reason to act out of self-interest, even if that self-interest would (at first sight) be detrimental to your best outcome.

After the age of enlightenment and the industrial revolution, the English watch industry lost out to the American and then the Swiss, the mechanical watch industry lost out to the quartz; the mechanical watch industry in England reverted back to hand made pieces with minimal machine input; that were hand-made and the product of a sole watchmaker. George Daniels stood out as the one of the few watchmakers showing the world that you could survive as a sole manufacturer of mechanical watches. From his small workshop, first in London, then on the Isle of Man, he believed he could restore the mechanical watch with an ability to outlast and outperform what appeared as a superior timekeeper. Acting in self interest, he nonetheless had to believe it was possible as he was moving the wrong way to the market. He was right, he bet the right way. How could a mechanical watch become more reliable, in need of less maintenance, and yet be just as (or more) accurate?









[The escapement that Daniels built: the co-axial that was fitted to the Millenium watch]

“I had to do it; I had to make sure that the development I had laboured for, for so long, was not consigned to the footnote of history. I sold it at a loss; the development of the co-axial had cost me more than I made on it.” George Daniels, despite his 84 years is still as lucid and forthright as he had ever been. He may look a little withered and aged than the once burly and eccentric character, but the hands (that could wield hammers of different sizes), interest, and intellect were still there. George is a fighter; his idea of convalescing after one illness was to rebuild his 1957 Bentley Continental ‘fastback’ that still sits in the garage. Being shown around where he lived the conversation naturally turned to watches, and to the watch’s escapement. We were talking about the development, the first new development to the escapement in about two hundred years, and the battle scars that George carried in his fight to get it accepted were still there.

I asked him if since selling the co-axial to Omega if there had been any feedback on the movements, how often they had needed maintenance, or had needed replacing. He had no idea. On some of the pocket watch movements, where the co-axial had been fitted, the fourth wheel had some small metallic deposits building up (visible through a high powered microscope), but no one, not George or Roger, could fathom out why.





[In discussion: Roger and George discussing the new movement design]

“We are all that are left for English watch making, Roger and I; no one makes watches as we do anymore; designing the watch from scratch, developing new movements, and hand making and hand (English) finishing it from start to finish.” The quartz decimation of the Swiss watch industry did have one positive effect, as watch firms were going under, George toured Switzerland buying up the old machines and lathes and he was able to re-equip his work shop. Ironically perhaps, but the machines George and Roger use are Swiss made to make English watches.

George moved to the Isle of Man in the late 1970’s when the situation in terms of taxation and livelihood meant that he could no longer remain viable as a business in London. He moved to a large house with grounds, outbuildings that were turned into garages for his car collection, and in the garden, a small pre-fabricated building was built as his workshop. George still works in his workshop for a few hours a day and is still active. When visiting him, I found him working on a remontoire escapement for a pocket watch. As with all the English watches, each component is made by hand, and experimented with, some parts remain in place; some are consigned to the ‘graveyard’.





[George at work on another pocket watch: a remontoir]



[The 'graveyard' of parts - where parts that do not make it, for whatever reason, go to remain hidden]

It was within the workshop that a number of the later pocket watches were made, and the Daniel’s Millennium watch was produced. By default, it was where Roger served out his ‘apprenticeship’ with George as he helped with (and eventually took charge of production of) the Millennium watch. Walking around the workshop with Roger and George, Roger stopped to show me the hand-turning machines for the guilloche pattern on the dials.





[Roger demonstrating how to hand turn dials]



[The hand turned dial parts for a Series 2. Each part has been shaped and made by hand, and the pattern on the dial applied by hand]

Hand turning dials is a ridiculously time consuming way of manufacturing them, but the depth and breadth of the patterning, the quality from the watch maker in turning that dial, has no equal. Roger sat down at one of the machines to show me how the hand turning is accomplished. He had the look of a past victim coming face to face with his torturer once again. A pattern is accomplished by fixing the metal object to be patterned on the disk. Each one of the patterned dials to the left (of the seated Roger) when used in combination with the oscillating mechanism and the hand turning of the metal disk will produce a pattern. For something that looks simple, such as the squared pattern on the main part of the dial for the Series 2, requires that you do one set of lines (across the squares) going one way, switch the disk around, and then work the pattern at a 90 degree angle from where it was. There are so many possibilities for it to go wrong. One small mistake and you can start the whole dial pattern again. The other obvious fact here is that you can only pattern one dial at a time. The machine might help with the pattern regularity, but the dial is hand-made. It requires concentration, precision, and hand crafted skill to produce the dial. A wry smile from Roger: “George used to get so cross with me as I was learning to hand turn the dials. I made so many mistakes to begin with.” Roger has now the Master’s hand, as the dials of the Series 2 attest.





[George's 'alter-ego' 1920's race car driver is still there; he still drives and maintains his collection of vintage race cars]

George’s house is part museum to watch and clock making, part museum to the past glories of English motor racing history. Memories and memorabilia of a life in watch making, and as his alter-ego Tim Birkin, cover almost every surface. From models of the ‘blower’ Bentleys and the 1928 Le Mans victory dinner, to the Space traveller’s watch that lie around the house where George lives. The Space travellers watch is particularly apt; it is the watch that bound George and Roger across time and space. It is hard to imagine where George would be now without Roger, and vice versa. It was the Space travellers watch that George brought with him that day he gave a talk at Roger’s school; that Roger looked at in near disbelief that one person could assemble such a watch from scratch; and that set Roger on the path to become a watch maker in his own right. Without Roger, George could not accomplish some of his later watches (including the Millennium series); without George, Roger would not have had the (small and isolated) finishing school to attend and there would have been a lesser chance for the continuation of English watch making.





[George was recently honoured by FP Journe with the presentation of a specially engraved Souverain. George wears both watches.]

For Roger and George, the essence of the English watch is that it is made to last not just for the owner’s lifetime, but for the generations to come. The watch should be aesthetic, easy to read, pleasing to the eye. But what is more important is that the essence and philosophy of the watch remain true throughout. That each part is finished to the same exacting standards, so that even if the movement needs maintenance, the work required would be minimal and simply return the watch to its original condition. George confessed as an engineer that he was very much of the same mind as Sir Henry Royce; that “(t)he quality will remain when the price is forgotten” and "(s)trive for perfection in everything you do. Take the best that exists and make it better. When it doesn't exist, design it." Put succinctly it is the creation of watches that will last, that are not part of the throw away society; it is the striving for perfection in the watch at any cost.





[Daniel's Space Traveller watch; the watch that set Roger on this watchmaking path when George Daniel's gave a presentation at Roger's school]

With the Co-axial Anniversary watch coming up, Roger splits his time between his own workshop (just a few miles down the road) and George’s. They are finalizing plans for the Anniversary watch and in the coming months, production will start. This will entail making every component from scratch, by hand. The Anniversary watch will be a first for George, and a continuance of Roger’s own philosophy in terms of the watch. The same properties that George brought to his watches, and Roger has brought to the Series 2 production watch, will be wrought into the Anniversary watch. The watch is something that is robust, but exquisite in finish; individual in terms of production, but also in terms of being worn and used. It is anything but machine made in design, content, and finish; it contains the complete value of the individual watchmakers’ skill







[Already iconic - the Roger Smith Series 2. It is a production watch with all design and build characteristics of the Daniel's pocket watches]

For those around in London in November, Roger will be at the Salon QP held in a de-consecrated church designed at the eve of the age of reason, where experimentation and commercialism held forth. It is worth going along to say hello, look at the watches, and simply chat with Roger (who is very personable). You will learn a great deal about watches in general, and about English watch making in particular.













[The growing range of Roger Smith watches: a flying tourbillon grand date; bespoke engraving for the movement or dial on the Series 2]

Although confined to a small corner of the world, (the Isle of Man) English watchmaking is both distinctive and unique and its future is in good hands.

Andrew H

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