I came across a word that appealed to my otherwise well buried lexicographer the other day: antonomasia. Loosely, antonomasia is a substitution for a name that, with repetition, can become as well understood as the name itself. The Fab Four, for example. Or, if football’s your thing and you’ve been around for a bit, the Class of ’92.
More recently, that has got me wondering: what would we understand by the term “British watchmaking”, a substitution of sorts for a diverse and often fractured collection of names that make up an old, dysfunctional industry?
Or, if British watchmaking were the name, what might the substitution be? The eleventh most important watchmaking centre in the world, perhaps. Or the Great British Basket Case.
That might be it.
Your answer will depend, we can reason, on how you see Wittgenstein’s Duck. The Austrian philosopher made the point that when looking at a line drawing of a duck, some will see a duck, while others will see a rabbit.
He called this aspect perception, and as anyone who’s ever seen something differently to someone else will know, perception is everything.
So for some, British watchmaking will conjure up grandiose images of the past and of the great horologists of the 17th and 18th centuries: Thomas “the father of English clockmaking” Tompion, George Graham, John “chronometer” Arnold, and of course John Harrison, whose instruments gave wind to Britannia’s ruling of the waves.
For others, the perception may be of George Daniels and his modern-day successor Roger Smith, as well as other high-minded contemporary watchmakers, such as those behind Charles Frodsham, Garrick, Struthers et al.
For them, abstruse terms such as “double impulse chronometer” will be akin to running the Union Flag up the pole on a blowy day.
And then for others still, it will signpost the band of entrepreneurial types who over the past 20 years have piggybacked on resurgent interest in mechanical watchmaking to launch businesses of their own.
Twenty-first century confections Bremont and Christopher Ward are the yardsticks, and now carry much of the weight of expectation on British watchmaking, despite their well-documented and long-running feud. One trying to fire up industrial watchmaking on these shores, the other flying the flag at the GPHG.
All this before we’ve mentioned plucky mavericks such as Bamford London, Studio Underd0g and what to my mind remains the great untapped story of the British watchmaking scene, Mr Jones Watches.
None of these perspectives is wrong, of course. British watchmaking is all of these things and more (hi there design-obsessives Anordain, Farer, Schofield and Pinion, and hello to revivalists Vertex, Fears and Duckworth Prestex).
With so much variety – right down the price spectrum too, thanks to window-fillers Sekonda, Accurist and Rotary – and have-a-go brands popping up left and right, British watchmaking would appear to be in royal health.
Yet somehow, it doesn’t feel like it.
What is British watchmaking? What defines it? Why should anyone care?
Robin Swithinbank
And that’s a teaser because – and I don’t think I’m suffering from jingoism, here – by rights, British watchmaking should be biting the heels of the Swiss watch industry, leveraging its pedigree and the fact that (yes, really) we’re a land of plenty. If not always economically or politically, certainly in terms of talent, ingenuity, style and ambition.
But step beyond our borders, and much of the world doesn’t know there’s a British watch industry, much less care.
Bremont is arguably our best export, and with Bill Ackman and Hellcat’s investment, and under Davide Cerrato’s guidance, it could yet give Britain status beyond Buckingham Palace, Aston Martin and Wembley. But its current annual output of circa 10,000 watches is a pinprick compared to the 16 million units coming out of Switzerland every year.
If anything, where it’s known, British watchmaking is still seen as a cottage industry, led either by eccentric shed tinkerers or Rover-driving Middle Englanders. We’re an outlier, and more damningly, we’re not defined by any one virtue.
Compare, for example, perceptions of German or Japanese watchmaking. Even the French appear to be doing things properly, and I’m talking about the Baltics, the Yemas and the March LABs, rather than the geographically schizophrenic emissions from the Parisian fashion houses (although Hermès’s recent stratospheric climb certainly qualifies).
This is not to throw darts (keeping it British) at the efforts of UK watchmaking. The moves to form a domestic alliance with an all-comers mandate, spearheaded by Roger Smith and Mike France of Christopher Ward, are enormously applaudable and to be encouraged.
Unions can be powerful. As worthy is the British Watchmakers’ Day that it’s spawned.
In the same vein, I hope it won’t be my dying wish that the Prince Harry-sized rift that separates these from Bremont is healed.
But an alliance will only move the dial if it can make the rest of the world pay attention.
What is British watchmaking? What defines it? Why should anyone care?
It’s at this point of course, that having pricked the balloon, I have to open my mouth and put some air back in it. At some level, to be British is to dish it and take it.
I’d start on paper, as I ever do, and with a three-pronged mantra. If the Germans do well to be known as technical, fastidious and reliable and the Japanese obsessive, inventive and reverential, what are we?
At the moment, you could be forgiven for thinking British watchmaking was navel-gazing, whiny and really quite dull. Which is a worry. Because at our best, the British are sophisticated, innovative and charming.
We’re the land of Savile Row, the World Wide Web and Blackadder, for goodness sake (although also Primark, missiles that plop into the sea and Mrs Brown’s Boys – but no matter). Is that reductive? Absolutely it is. But that’s ok, because we know the world likes us when we’re like this.
And we’ve got to be sophisticated, innovative and charming while making some noise, which is not very British at all. But you can startle and impress without busting out the varicose veins blowing your own trumpet.
Look at seconde/seconde/, the gleefully anarchic and consummately French artist currently tearing up watchmaking with his subversive, utterly compelling collaborations. In not even two years, using little more than wit and whimsy, he’s built a brand and a story that’s distinctly French that watch buyers and brands can’t get enough of.
As it is, seconde/seconde/ is a nice little example of antonomasia – behind the substitution is Romaric André.
British watchmaking should be more André.
