Meet the new breed of British watchmakers that are shaking up the horology scene

Charlie Teasdale meets the Londoners reinventing horology
Charlie Teasdale12 October 2017

A new breed of contemporary British watchmaker is shaking up the horology world with a less-is-more approach to design and price.

Based right here in our capital, these independent brands are appealing to the next generation of collector seeking a cooler, more minimal timepiece over the heavy gold badge of success that their parents’ generation aspired to own. Championing clean modern design over bold branding, they are utilising the best of Swiss and British know-how, but are for the most part priced between £250 and £1,000.

LARSSON & JENNINGS

Perhaps the biggest success story of this British watchmaking resurgence, Larsson & Jennings has gone from bedroom start-up to multimillion-pound business in five years.

‘I met Joakim Larsson during a ski season in Austria,’ remembers Andrew Jennings, 33, who at the time worked in the City as an investment manager. ‘We realised there weren’t any independent, cool, affordable, Swiss-made watch brands in the UK, so we took a road trip around Switzerland and ended up going to a few factories.’ The pair used credit cards, sold their cars and saved money to fund the first 100 watches, which they sold to friends to help pay for the website. ‘I was cycling to my job in finance with watches in my backpack,’ Jennings says, ‘sending out orders from the post office.’ Then, in the December of their first year, the brand sold 1,000 two-hand quartz watches. Jennings quit his job and began Larsson & Jennings in earnest.

Andrew Jennings moved from banking to the watch world

The business has enjoyed significant year-on-year growth and in December 2014 it opened a flagship store on Monmouth Street in Covent Garden. Larsson & Jennings watches are stocked in more than 200 top-tier locations around the world. The watches are known for their sleek, 40mm dials and matching tonal leather or chain-mesh straps that appeal to the young creative who changes bands to match their look. There is an automatic — a steal at £745 — and countless variations of the original, barnstorming Lugano dominated by its large minimal face. There’s even talk of a smart watch to come. But for now, Jennings — the remaining founder since Larsson moved on to other projects in Sweden — is happy to be an enfant terrible of the watch world. ‘We are still the new kids on the block, and we relish that.’

UNIFORM WARES

Though still in relative infancy, Uniform Wares could be considered the torchbearer of the ‘minimal’ British watchmaking movement. ‘The aesthetic was just a by-product of considered design,’ explains creative director Michael Carr, 35, who was formerly lead designer for Braun watches. ‘As product designers that’s often the way you start — by taking away what you don’t need.’

Uniform Wares was founded in 2009 by Oliver Fowles, 36, formerly an architectural model maker for Richard Rogers and David Chipperfield. The original plan was to create a collection of useful daily tools, such as a pen, a belt, a wallet etc. The first product to emerge was a pared-back monochromatic wristwatch, the 100 Series (£100), which launched in December 2009. That first batch of 1,000 watches sold out before the new year, and by the start of 2010 Uniform Wares was stocked in design stores around the world.

Uniform Wares’ creative director Michael Carr, left, and co-founder Oliver Fowles

Eight years later and Uniform Wares has 12 Swiss-made timepieces, a watch in San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art and a new made-to-measure service operating out of its flagship ‘atelier’ on Shoreditch’s Paul Street. Prices range from £250 to £850 for watches featuring Milanese Napa leather or a made-to-measure strap. An appointment at the atelier will have you meeting Fowles to discuss options, while the technician assembles it. There are thousands of colour, material and design combinations. Just don’t ask them to put a logo on it.

Waterproof smartwatches - in pictures

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FARER

Farer is run from a studio in Lancaster Gate and a farm in Ascot but speak to its four founders — all former retail and advertising whizzes with a passion for vintage watches — and you’ll see that world domination is not far from reach.

‘We recognised there was a consumer out there that no longer wanted to buy into unfounded luxury,’ says Ben Lewin, 42, of their contemporary timepieces, priced from £283 to £1,175. ‘They wanted to know more about where the product was being made and the materials that were going into them.’

Farer co-founders Jono Holt, left, and Ben Lewin

Farer has moved at breakneck speed since bursting on to the British watch scene in 2015 with nine quartz watches. They’ve since unveiled three automatics, three GMT-complication automatics and three ‘Aqua Compressor’ dive watches. Beyond the aesthetics — each watch features a bronze crown —Farer is possibly the best bang-for-buck watches on the market. The Beagle, Hopewell and Endurance feature an ETA 2824-2 movement, the same engine you’ll find in timepieces that cost three times more. The Lancaster Gate studio is the best place to sample Farer on-wrist, but with a growth rate of 400 per cent year-on-year the team is eyeing a Mayfair studio — on Brook Street no less.

SEKFORD

An aesthete rather than a watchmaker by trade, Kuchar Swara, 36, founded Sekford in 2015. ‘I’d been working in Milan in magazine art direction,’ he remembers, ‘and I thought it would be nice to sink my teeth into something physical.’

Despite being one of London’s creative minds — Kuchar is co-founder of Port magazine — watch design wasn’t his forte, so he went in search of enlightenment. At the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers, Swara was inspired by the minimalism that British designers have employed since the 17th century. ‘It struck me that the dials were pure in their refinement — it was all about legibility.’ Many of those watches were made on Sekforde Street in Clerkenwell, which is how Sekford got its name. Though its watches are made in Switzerland, everything else is conceived in London.

Uniform Wares’ creative director Michael Carr, left, and co-founder Oliver Fowles

So far there is just one Sekford watch, the elegant 1A, but more designs are in the works. And the business is ticking along nicely thanks to Kuchar’s unexpected clientele: ‘The majority of my customers work in finance and law,’ he exclaims. ‘I imagine it appeals to their sense of history and they like the story.’

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