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19 September 2024
Timepieces: Dorset’s Elliot Brown Watches
22 September 2024The hands of genius
Based in a historic workshop in Birmingham, Rebecca and Craig Struthers not only restore antique timepieces, but also use their unique skills to craft intricate creations that are modern-day heirlooms
R un like clockwork. It’s a well-used phrase that means things are going well. Better than well, perfect perhaps. So what happens when a real watch stops working? Well, that’s when the mystery begins, as bespoke watchmakers and restorers Rebecca and Craig Struthers know only too well.
An old timepiece won’t have instructions and it won’t have replacement parts. There are hundreds of tiny pieces, each with a reason for being there, an action, and if one of those individual components fails – a drop, dust, humidity, lack of lubrication – finding the problem, and solving it, can take days, weeks even. Sometimes new, minuscule components have to be hand made, another tiny piece of the puzzle, one of the most precise puzzles you can imagine.
From a workshop in Regent Place, Birmingham, that was once the property of British industrialist James Watt and home to Britain’s oldest family goldsmiths, Deakin & Francis, since 1786, we speak to Rebecca and Craig Struthers of Struthers Watchmakers about their unique business, tailor-making watches, and their first-ever in-house movement.
‘An old watch ticking away is quite magical, it’s the opposite of modern technology,’ Craig says. ‘At the same time there are some incredible things in horology with technology now. It’s fantastic to see how complicated and extreme some of the mechanisms are for timepieces, but I think for us, we’ve just carved our own path.’
It is in this juxtaposition between cutting-edge technology and deep-rooted tradition where watch-making excels.
In the Struthers workshop, there is an Apple Mac in the corner, but it is the antique machines and tools that dominate the scene. It’s a very manual activity, reliant on the skills and knowledge of Rebecca and Craig as an antiquarian horologist and master watchmaker respectively.
‘Inadvertently starting out, we didn’t have much funding behind us, and we ended up buying a lot of antique equipment and restoring it,’ Rebecca explains. ‘Now that production has informed our creative process and you can see it in the watches. What began as a necessity has become a completely integral part of the way we work, and now business is growing we still wouldn’t change it. We still love to buy in these beautiful antique machines and lathes, restore them and then use them every day in our work.’
‘We buy in beautiful antique machines, restore them and then use them in our work.’
Craig and Rebecca are a husband-and-wife partnership, combining years of experience in vintage and antique watch restoration with award-winning design and research. Their first watch, Stella, in 2013, won a range of awards including the prestigious Design Innovation Award for a ground-breaking design in platinum.
The couple met at the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design in 2004 having between them studied and qualified in watchmaking, jewellery, silversmithing, fine art, gemmology and history of design.
Craig came into watchmaking relatively late at 34 having stumbled across it filling out a questionnaire in the Job Centre. ‘I kept doing the aptitude tests, and it kept coming up!’ Craig said. ‘Three years learning watchmaking seemed like a long time, but now I realise you’ll never really master it in a lifetime.’
‘We looked at our workshop, we looked at our tools and we wondered what sort of watch we could make. We decided to go back 100 years and choose something from that period.’
Rebecca was studying jewellery and silversmithing, moving to horology in 2005, and becoming the first British watchmaker to receive a doctorate in horology. ‘I’ve always been the sort of person who loved both science and art at school, but they were always taught as very different subjects. Finding horology for me was a way of bringing together two things that I loved.
‘A watch is the combination of a work of art and a work of design, of an incredible piece of engineering and incredibly efficient machine, one that has also played such a hugely important part in our social and economic development.
‘The earliest watches I’ve worked on are from the 16th century. You think about how much they have experienced and seen and then being able to input that inspiration into the pieces that we make now, it’s an incredible thing to be part of.’
It’s a singular combination of skills that informs the duo’s work across restoration, design and the Struthers’ first in-house movement.
It’s a singular combination of skills that informs the duo’s work across restoration, design and the Struthers’ first in-house movement
The latter is known currently as Project 248: two minds, four hands and an 8mm lathe. Project 248 will be grounded in traditional English horology and goldsmithing, along with traditions from France and Germany.
‘It will bring back features that have been lost to modern production methods which, while meaning little to the uninitiated, are seemingly a big deal in terms of watchmaking. (We’re talking parachute shock setting, a slow 16,200 beat and gold jewel chatons here….)
The top plate is inspired by an English pocket watch from 1880 among the Struthers’ historical collection. Master engraver Florian Güllert will decorate the movements and Scottish cabinet makers Method Studio will make the box. Only five are being made initially.
Craig says: ‘We looked at our workshop, we looked at our tools and thought what sort of watch could we make, especially movement-wise. We decided to go back a hundred years and choose something from that period and make it now without changing too much, just some of the materials. This model will be a base that we can explore and add to as a future piece. The idea is that, as time goes on, we can add further complications to it.’
Watchmaking worldwide is an industry that on the surface is thriving, but there is genuine concern about the lack of skills, not just in the UK but worldwide.
The Heritage Crafts Association has just upgraded watchmaking to critically endangered in their Red List of Endangered Crafts. The organisation has been lobbying parliament to join the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage which in turn could add watchmaking to the list.
Words: Staff
