Interview with Michael Clerizo

Lots of rappers wear bracelets, necklaces, rings and watches, says Michael Clerizo, speaking of the universality of watches. A few months ago in Ireland I met a man covered with tattoos but he still wears a watch. Some men have parts of their bodies pierced but still wear watches. And, staid bankers in Zurich who would never dream of wearing necklaces or getting tattoos and having their bodies pierced also wear watches.

About seven years ago, an editor asked me if I wanted to write an article about watches. At the time I knew nothing about watches but ignorance never stops freelancers, so of course I said yes. When I began researching I was struck by the beauty of many watches made by famous companies like Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin. Eventually I learned that a few watchmakers still worked on their own making watches mostly by hand and in very low volume, sometimes only one or two a year. Most of these watchmakers are unknown outside of a tiny circle of collectors and aficionados so I made it my mission to bring them to the attention of a wider audience.

A great watchmaker needs to be obsessive about his work. The book is full of stories about watchmakers who did ten- to fourteen-hour days, seven days a week, for years without a break just to master their craft. This is beyond devotion or dedication, it is obsession. The next thing a great watchmaker needs is faith in himself. It is not enough just to master the craft. A great watchmaker wants his own name on the watches he makes. A great watchmaker needs faith in himself because all great watchmakers are rebels and gamblers - they rebel against the idea of going to work for a company and they gamble that their own skill will produce a superb watch that others will want to buy. So, that’s it, a great watchmaker is obsessive, rebellious and a gambler.

If you asked twenty watch lovers that you’d get twenty different answers. Watchmaking is between 500 and 600 years old and that’s a lot of history. For me, a great watch acknowledges that history and at the same time pushes that history into the next chapter. That’s what the watches of George Daniels do. Daniels was the first person for hundreds of years to make a watch entirely on his own. He is always pushing, he’s trying to find a way to make a better mechanical watch than anyone else has every made. He is always trying to write the next chapter in the history of horology.

I think the easiest way to see the difference between the two is to think of a mechanical watch movement and the quartz watch as engines - like all engines they need energy. A mechanical watch movement gets its energy when the watch is wound. As the mainspring unwinds it releases energy. The energy drives a series a wheels, pinions and gears. The wheels and gears in turn drive a device called the escapement, the part of the watch that makes the tick-tock sound we all know. Put all those components together properly and they control the hour, minute and seconds hands. A quartz watch gets its energy from a battery. The battery sends an electric current through a circuit board to a tiny quartz crystal. When the current hits the crystal it vibrates at a constant frequency. Now, the current with its vibrations goes to another circuit board. That circuit board feeds that current to a small series of gears that control the hands of the watch.
    Basically that’s it. But, that’s not the whole story. When you look at the movement of mechanical watch you see the intricate intimacies that the watchmaker has created between the different components. You see instantly how the mechanism works, how it moves. You know that a human being using his hands made what you are looking at. You see symmetry, you see colours, and you see beauty. A quartz watch has none of that. Look at the inside of a quartz watch and you know a machine manufactured it with little or no human involvement in the process.

It was something Franck Muller said. He said that if we ever encounter another civilisation from somewhere else in the universe and they have a different way to telling time and a different way of viewing time it will be a big shock for us. What if we do meet another civilisation and they don’t come from a planet that orbits a sun in 365 days like ours? What will their idea of a year be? Will they have birthdays? I starting contact friends and asking them what they thought. It’s a great way of avoiding work.

I think what attracts men to watchmaking is a love of skillful work that produces beautiful objects. The same thing is true of women. Traditionally watchmaking is a profession pursued mostly by men. Go to a watchmaking school today and you’ll see as many female as male students. Just as I believe there will always be mechanical watches I am also sure that men’s domination of watchmaking will not last forever. I can’t wait. I’ll bet women will do things with watches men would never dream of.

That’s easy. Be prepared to work harder than everybody you know.