| Today
watchmaking is closely identified in our consciousness with Switzerland, yet
English horology was once considered the highpoint of the art for hundreds
of years, at a time when Swiss watch making was centuries away from achieving
its currently held status. This golden period of English watchmaking was spanned
by makers such as Tompion, Harrison, Mudge, Graham, Earnshaw and Arnold. English
clocks and pocket watches were prized creations available only to the powerful
and wealthy. The recipient of the longitude prize, John Harrison, shrunk his
ship's chronometers in format from extremely large table clocks to a small
portable timekeeper within a span of just 40 years, thus paving the way for
the diminution of mechanical and accurate timekeeping that would eventually
lead to the wristwatch chronometer of today. This highpoint of English horological
creation and invention forms the very basis of the Roger W. Smith workshop's
philosophy towards watchmaking. Many design features, including movement layout
and structural details, visual proportions and numerous visual details, are
directly stimulated by the masterpieces from this period. This inspiration
forms the essence from which the workshop reinterprets the past, combining
them with modern horological developments such as the Daniels co-axial escapement
in order to create exclusive and distinctly English wristwatches for the connoisseurs
of today. In the following pages, a number of techniques that are part of this
tradition will be discussed in detail. |
