“We have a waiting list. In fact, we have a waiting list for the waiting list, really,” says watchmaker Roger W Smith OBE, proud but perhaps also a little embarrassed, in that very British way. “But the people who buy our watches are self-selecting in a way, in part because not many people know about us, and in part because not many people are willing to wait five or six years for a new watch.”
Also, in part, because they will be looking to drop six figures. “We had one customer who reckoned that, with all the money he’d spent on his wife’s jewellery over the previous 20 years, it just about equalled out with one of our watches,” Smith chuckles.
Why the fuss? Because Smith is often referred to as one of the world’s greatest living watchmakers, the heir to George Daniels – in his lifetime called the same – the inventor of the co-axial escapement (a ground-breaking innovation now owned by Omega). Smith, indeed, was Daniels’ one and only apprentice – and a more than fitting recipient of the Industry Hero gong at this year’s Square Mile Watch Awards.
Smith, by his own admission “one of those kids who just didn’t get on with school”, was steered towards a horology course by his antiques dealer father. It was somewhat of an ironic direction, as his father was “completely impractical”, Smith says. “But I did have this obsessive quest to make things perfect – my first model aircraft had glue everywhere, so I kept going until there was no glue visible,” he admits. “So I think I found the right outlet in watchmaking”.
Few, however, would have had the brass balls – not even microscopic, perfectly balanced, hand-made ones – to then tell Daniels he was going to present him with a pocket watch. But, 18 months of long nights’ toil later, Smith did just that. Daniels more or less brushed the effort aside and told him to try again. So he did. The second time, Daniels was impressed. So impressed that Smith would become Skywalker to his Kenobi. When Daniels died in 2011, he bequeathed all of his watchmaking tools to Smith.
I have this obsessive quest to make things perfect – I found the right outlet in watchmaking
Smith would, in a sense, be bequeathed another thing from Daniels too, what he admiringly calls “the Daniels method”. An extremely rare thing even in elite watchmaking, nearly every part and every process that goes into making a Roger W Smith watch is done in-house, by hand. That explains why only around 12 or so watches are made per year. “Companies tend to announce their annual increase in production as though it was a recognition of doing well, but if I made 20 watches a year I’d know something must have gone down in quality to make that many,” he says.
But if more can sometimes be less, there is sense to the Daniels method. “I remember George Daniels telling me that all he needed was a germ of an idea and from that he could complete the entire watch, which I found just incredible, but having the ability to design a component in the morning and have it fixed in a watch by the end of the day is amazingly liberating,” Smith says. “It also means I’m not beholden to the ideas of other watchmakers.”
Not that Smith really has a clue what other watchmakers think. And he likes it that way. “I don’t pay much attention to the rest of the watch industry,” he laughs, though he will say he admires the work of A Lange & Sohne, Patek Philippe (“some of them, I’m not so hot on all of them,” he says, refreshingly heretical), and thinks the advent of more entry-level micro-brands the likes of Farer and Vertex are great “because good watchmaking should be an enjoyment to all [who are interested],” he says.
But there’s a good reason why he lives and works – alongside his now 14-strong team – on the Isle of Man. “It’s very useful in that the only thing I can be here is an independent,” he says. “There was a time when I thought the isolation wasn’t good for me, that I wasn’t hanging out with Swiss watchmakers and having chats,” says Smith, “but actually I think it’s made me more bloody-minded, more free of outside influences. I can tread my own path.”
In-house rules
According to Smith, the Series 2 “is probably the most important watch in the history of the company; the first watch to be completely made in-house.” This example, number one of five, was sold by Phillips in 2023 for CHF508,000.
What that results in are watches that are aesthetically classical – round, often open-work dials, Roman numerals, gold cases, with Smith signatures the likes of a raised barrel bridge, jewels in gold chatons, silver dials and gold hands – but which are highly functional, without exactly being minimalistic or built to dive with sharks. For Smith this means that they fit within what he calls “the great tradition of British watchmaking”. For those light on horological history, Britain was once at the forefront of watch and clock-making. So for Smith, it’s “all about constant improvement to mechanical time-keeping. I see watches first as practical tools.”
To this end, Smith has made important advances. He radically re-invented Daniels’ escapement to make it lighter, for example. His Series 4 watch – the first finished examples of which should see light of day by the end of this year – is an instantaneous triple calendar piece in which, in a watchmaking first, the date indicator travels around the outer edge of the dial without the need of a hand cluttering it up. And a few years ago, he launched a research project with the Faculty of Science & Engineering at Manchester Metropolitan University into the use of nano-materials.
Mechanical watchmaking’s biggest problem is lubrication – the many moving parts periodically have to be oiled. Giving these parts a permanent nano coating could do away with that inconvenience and cost. Thinking over the longer-term, Smith reckons that such improvements to the movement he could work on would give us a mechanical watch that could go up to 20 years or more between servicing.
Isolation has made me more bloody-minded, free of outside influences. I can tread my own path
“George always drummed into me that there wasn’t any point in just making pretty watches, and he was right – I don’t want to be making watches for the sake of making them,” Smith insists. “What we make may get into that idea of high-end craft – the hand-making of something very bespoke – but it comes from a very strong horological team.
“Really what we’re about is constant R&D. I like the idea of the watches I make matching their owners’ lifespans and much more, in the same way that you can take a pocket watch that’s 300 years old and with minimal work it will keep as good time now as it did when it was made.”
Such a philosophy clearly speaks to some people: when Smith sold a watch by auction directly from his company for the first time this year it raised £600,000, twice its reserve. Part of the money was later donated to the Alliance of British Clock & Watchmakers, a group working to get British watchmaking back on the global prestige footing that it once enjoyed.
Man of the moment
Roger W Smith in his office on the Isle of Man.
“There’s something in my story that [my clients] understand and appreciate, a counter to the otherwise frenetic world we live in maybe, or an appreciation in seeing someone use their hands to produce things. Perhaps they appreciate the effort that went into my training,” says Smith. “Or perhaps they just know that modern watches are all mass-produced – and feel, as I do, that means they all have something missing.”
Naturally, Smith is tight-lipped about actually naming his clientele, though does note that a disproportionate number of them are self-made, or have successfully taken family firms to the next level, with quite a few in manufacturing.
Yet perhaps the most public owner of a Roger Smith is Ed Sheeran. You may quibble with his taste in haircut and clothing, but not in watches. No obvious off-the-shelf bling for Mr Sheeran – just the A team.
It’s a watchmaking philosophy that Smith hopes to imbue in his own padawan too. “I very much feel a responsibility to pass the knowledge I got from George, and which I’ve gained since, on to other watchmakers, and of course while I don’t want them to leave, I’m sure one of those I work with here now will go on to set up their own watchmaking business,” says Smith. “If it helps bring back British watchmaking, and its particular approach to watchmaking, then it’s all good.”
See all the winners of this year’s Square Mile Watch Awards on here.
