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On Thursday in New York, at the auction house Phillips, a celebrity roamed the exhibition hall where the soon-to-be-sold watches were set out for display. Roger Smith, the 53-year-old master watchmaker, might not be a household name, but in horology circles he inspires Belieber-like reactions. “We had a young lady, a really enthusiastic watch collector, maybe 24, 25, she was starstruck,” said Paul Boutros, the head of watches in the Americas for Phillips. “She was sweating with excitement.”
Smith is a holy figure in the industry: the Britain native is the protege of George Daniels—who literally wrote the book on watchmaking—and his pieces are revered because they are completely handcrafted by him from start to finish. Smith’s eponymous label only makes about 10 watches a year, each of which sells for six-figure sums. On Saturday, the second pocket watch Smith ever made (he discarded the first, that he presented to Daniels at the age of 22, after his mentor said it looked “too handmade”) will go up for auction; it is expected to sell for over a million dollars.
“I do think it is one of the most important timepieces in the world, full stop,” Boutros said of the pocket watch. “If Roger didn't make it, the entire landscape of today's independent watchmaking would be very, very different.”
Smith’s importance to British watchmaking is hard to overstate. After Daniels died in 2011, Smith became the last remaining high-end British watchmaker. Smith is now carving a path forward for the industry, training the next generation of watchmakers in his isolated studio on the Isle of Man, just off the west coast of the United Kingdom. There’s a reason that David Cameron commissioned a watch from Smith in 2013, which has since traveled the globe to promote British craftsmanship.
We chatted with Smith about what it’ll mean to have a piece he made sell for over a million bucks, the hardest and easiest parts about making a watch, and whether he ever checks the time on his phone.
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*__GQ: __*You hadn't actually seen this piece since 2004. What was it like to get to handle it and see it again?
Smith: It is a very nice experience. I haven't seen it really since 2004, so you have these ideas as to what it may be like, but I was pleasantly surprised. It's just nice to be reunited with it, to see the level that I was achieving back then. I do remember when I made it, it got to a point where I said to myself, "I can't improve this any more, so now it is time to show this watch to George Daniels." And I still believe that it stood up to that.
Can you put this pocket watch into the context of your career?
It's been a career-defining watch for me. The first watch I made and showed to George, George said, "Go away. Start another watch. It looks too handmade." This watch is definitely a career-defining moment, it is the watch where I really honed all my skills and really learned how to handmake a watch, how to hand-build a watch using what we call the Daniels method today, where one person designs and makes a complete watch in its entirety. Is the watch that George said, "Congratulations, you're a watchmaker." So that's a huge moment for me, and ultimately, it led to me working with George.
I then sold the piece in 2004. Once I'd made it, in some respects, it had served its purpose. As a watch, I didn't really use it, because it had done its job, I'd learnt all that I could from it, and I was at that point trying to build this business that we have today and I needed some funds. I needed to raise some funds to help invest in machinery and equipment and so on.
I had a client at the time, who I felt was very keen on the watch, and he ended up being the owner of it. So for me, it's helped me many times throughout my career really to get to the next stage, and here we are today with this watch to be sold again in two days time. It's nice to reflect back on all of the good that the watch has given me, really, and it's now taking on its own life. It's very much ready for its next phase of life and new ownership, and it's wonderful to be a part of that.
It took you five years to make this particular watch. What is that like just to be in the midst of that, and how do you keep going? And for someone who might not understand what it takes to make a watch, why does it take five years to make a piece like this?
Yes. Well, so actually, it's five-and-a-half years.
Five-and-a-half.
It was remade about four times throughout that period. The reason was simply because I was learning all of these different skills that are required to make a handmade watch. So it's worth putting it into context. George Daniels, when he made his first watch in the late 1960s, was the first person ever in history to sit down and design a complete watch from start to finish. Prior to that, [each part] had always been done by individual trades people. So you'd have gone to your case maker or dial maker or wheel maker and so on.
So George started this very unusual approach to watchmaking, and that was as a result of him living in Britain, and the once-prosperous British watchmaking industry had disappeared. It was on its knees. So that's why he had to do this, and this is why I had to go down this same route. This idea where one designs and makes a complete watch—that's what I was trying to achieve. And that's why it took so long, because there's 32 individual trades involved in the creation of a single watch. And I had to learn all the different processes for all the individual components of how to take it from raw material through to finished components. That's where the challenge lay.
The next question I have written down is just “Why?” What compels a man for five-and-a-half years to dedicate his life to a watch?
I was just obsessed with this idea of making a handmade watch. When I first met George Daniels as a 17-year-old, he just had this incredible impact on me. This idea that one man could design and make a watch from start to finish, I couldn't believe it was possible when I first met George. For me, it's the ultimate goal of horology to be able to design and make a complete watch, and I was just totally absorbed and totally obsessed by this challenge really.
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By the time you were doing this, everyone had long since transitioned to wearing wristwatches. Why a pocket watch?
Skill level. I felt that to be able to make a pocket watch would be a lot easier.
Parts are bigger.
Yeah, a 1/200ths of a millimeter, whereas for a wristwatch you're down to sort of 3 to 4/1000ths of a millimeter, and I just simply didn't have those skills. That's something I subsequently learned after building these sort of watches.
What do you think is cool about a pocket watch that people might not appreciate?
I think it's the size. It has a substantial weight to it. When you open the back of a watch like this, you've got a lot going on in the mechanism. You can hear it tick, you can feel it tick, and they are very much alive, and everything is easily seen within a pocket watch and explainable and so on. Yeah, I think it's just a wonderful scale medium in which to build a handmade watch.
Do you have a pocket watch? Have you ever carried around a pocket watch? I just love the idea. If I was talking to someone, and they went to check the time on a pocket watch, I'd be like, “That's the coolest thing I've ever seen.”
I haven't, but I am thinking of buying one. I would like to own a pocket watch.
What is the single hardest piece of a watch to make? As you're learning all of these disciplines, which one do you think was the most challenging?
I think for me, it certainly is the escapement. Many components were made and remade in the building of this escapement, and it was just learning the correct sort of techniques. So the escape wheel: I had many, many attempts at making a good escape wheel.
You have to file a steel spring down to half the thickness of a human hair and that's the challenge. On my very first watch, I think I was working on that singular component for probably two months and not getting very far. And really, I only started making good detents towards the end of building this piece, but that's because my general skill levels were just sort of slowly creeping up.
What's the easiest component of a watch to make, the least challenging?
Gosh, everything was challenging. There's no doubt about it. I remember when I made the first baseplate for the first watch, the idea is to make a very nice flat disc and hollow it out. But my first attempt, it ended up bowing and distorting completely out of shape. So I had to throw that away and start again on it. That was the first component I made for the first watch and obviously for this watch.
It's at that point that I realized there's more to this than meets the eye. And to solve that issue, I realized or worked out that I had to temper it, so I had to heat up the piece of brass first to a glowing red color, and then let it cool to take all the stresses out of the material before I turn it. So the very first component was a challenge, and that never ended, as I picked off all the individual components it’s just a baptism by fire.
So the answer's kind of baseplate, but it's still extremely difficult.
Yes. Now, it would be simple because I've learned all these skills, but the baseplate was in theory a very easy piece to make, but it wasn't.
I wanted to ask one of the world's greatest living watchmakers if you use your watch to check the time or your phone like the rest of us.
I do use my phone. I'm guilty as everyone else. Yeah, very much so. But a watch is just a lovely thing to own, isn't it? It's a story, the technology that goes into creating these things, which is for me so addictive.
What do you think about a technology like quartz?
I have a few of the early quartz, actually. For me, it was an incredible achievement, incredible phase of timekeeping, really. The Swiss watch industry was going through turmoil, almost destroying itself, and all due to these sort of crazy electronic watches, which have a fabulous history and story in their own rights. So yeah, no, they play a great part in the story of watchmaking.
Obviously, this watch has a very high estimate. I wonder what it would mean for you to see it sell north of the “in excess of $1 million” estimate?
Well, I think it'll be significant. It'll be significant in my career. It'll be a new phase of my career, in effect. It'll be hugely gratifying to see people putting so much value on my early work. I suppose it's recognition of those early days of my work. We'll see what happens on the day, but I'm looking forward to it.
Why do you think watchmaking is an important art to maintain and continue and to uphold?
Well, I think you only have to look at all these watches upstairs here at Phillips today. Each watch has their own story, how the watch was created, who it's created by and so on. And I think in this really high-tech world we live in today, where everything is becoming all about digitalization and so on, I think these watches are all taking on a life of their own and have something real. There's something real and tangible about them. I've seen young collectors upstairs, and all across the age range, fascinated by these types of watches.
Can I ask you which watch you’re wearing today?
An Omega Speedmaster. This is the one which has the 3861 movement in it. The original 861 was a classic Omega movement, but what attracted me to this one was that they fitted it with a single-wheel co-axial escapement. So obviously, I came up with the idea 10 years previously [Smith, in partnership with Daniels, worked on the project for Omega TK], but it's nice to see, it's quite important to see that.
