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Artist & Photographer Adam Marelli (Plus, Horological Deep-Dives With Jack)

Published on Mon, 31 Aug 2020 10:00:38 +0000

Are watches art? Does mechanical precision matter? Today we're asking the big questions.

Synopsis

In this episode of Hodinkee Radio, host Stephen Pulvirent welcomes artist, photographer, and builder Adam Morelli for an in-depth conversation about craft, culture, and the intersection of creativity with watchmaking. Before diving into the main interview, Stephen sits down with Hodinkee's Editor-in-Chief Jack Forster to discuss several recent deep-dive articles exploring horological topics ranging from the evolution of watch escapements to the philosophy of travel watches and alternative histories of watchmaking.

The conversation with Jack covers his methodical approach to making complex technical subjects accessible to both newcomers and experts. They discuss how the Swiss lever escapement became the industry standard, why innovation in this space remains so challenging, and how Jack's stories emerge from reader questions and comments. Jack also shares an amusing anecdote about Omega executives acknowledging that the coaxial escapement, while technically superior, requires such extensive horological knowledge to appreciate that it appeals to "about six people on Earth."

The centerpiece of the episode is Stephen's conversation with Adam Morelli, who discusses his journey from sculpture to photography, driven initially by the need to document his work rather than artistic ambition. Adam explains his concept of "cultural photography" and how his hands-on experience with craft allows him to understand and capture the creative process in ways that traditional photojournalism cannot. He shares insights from working with Japanese craftspeople, particularly knife makers, and how their tradition of learning through observation rather than questions creates masters who can "read" objects and materials.

The discussion explores Adam's entry into watches through Dava Sobel's "Longitude," his fascination with George Daniels and F.P. Journe, and his philosophical approach to the perennial question of whether watches are art or craft. Adam argues that the distinction matters less than whether something "mirrors back an understanding of life," and shares how Zen philosophy has shaped his approach to both creativity and living. The episode concludes with Adam reflecting on why he pursues his diverse creative practice: the process of understanding creation has made life immeasurably richer and more dimensional than he ever expected.

Transcript

Speaker
Stephen Pulvirent If we go to the ballet, I have no clue what I'm looking at. I can't tell what's coming next. I only know things as they happened, and even when they did, I have no idea what they mean. But I can go into a workshop that's manufacturing a Japanese temple and like I have good sense as to what I'm looking at, how these pieces are gonna put themselves together. So I've always been fascinated in that creation process where you go from raw material to something else. Hey everybody, I'm your host Stephen Polverant and this is Hodinky Radio. By now, if you're a regular listener, you'll know that I love having guests on the show who can't be boiled down to just a simple label. And this week's guest is a perfect example of that. Adam Morelli's an artist, he's a photographer, he's a builder, he's a philosopher, he's a craftsman, and of course he's a watch lover. Uh but he's also a friend, he's somebody I've known for a while, and somebody who I always enjoy talking to about big ideas and the ways that we find meaning in the little things. It was a ton of fun to finally have him on the show and sit down and chat about things like what defines culture, what makes it so difficult to pin down, why is Zen philosophy has helped Adam find a center, and how he ended up a watch enthusiast after reading a book about John Harrison. We also dig into some big and sort of controversial questions, but you're gonna have to listen on to hear that. Before my chat with Adam though, I sit down with our own editor-in-chief, Mr. Jack Forrester, to talk about some of the recent stories he's written for the site. Specifically, I'm interested in some of these big, winding, in-depth pieces about things like how the modern watch escapement came to be, the pros and cons of different types of travel watches, and what horological history could have been like if just one or two tiny things changed. These stories are about as jack as a story can get, and I think they're really quintessential hodinky stories. So without further ado, let's do this. This week's episode is presented by Accutron and the Acatron Show Podcast. In addition to relaunching the iconic mid-century watch brand, Accutron has produced a new podcast focused on bringing you a new generation of conversations for the 21st century. Stay tuned later in the show to learn more or visit AcutromWatch.com. Hey Jack, thanks for joining us.
Jack Forster Well thank you for having me, Stephen. It's a pleasure to be back on the show. It's been a busy, busy couple of weeks at the dank, hasn't it? Uh it certainly has. Uh anybody who thought that this was gonna be a slow year, uh boy were they wrong? I mean I kinda thought it was going to be to be honest a few months ago.
Stephen Pulvirent Yeah, agreed. I mean I feel like every summer we think like, oh, Switzerland's gonna shut down, it's gonna be quiet, whatever, uh and it never happens. And this year I had this like vague hope that like maybe that would be true. Uh with everything going on. You know, I was like, oh maybe there will be a little bit of a lull. We can catch our breath, plan some long term stuff, whatever. No, that's that's clearly clearly not the case
Jack Forster . Yeah, as a matter of fact, um I think things did slow down a little bit in the earlier part of the year, but uh a lot of these brands, a lot of the companies in Switzerland in general, you know, they they really seem to feel like, okay, we're not gonna wait an entire year uh to make major product announcements. And you know, lest we forget, they've had they've had this stuff in the pipeline that they're showing now. It's been under development for anywhere from uh depending on what it is, two to seven years
Stephen Pulvirent . Yeah, no, that's that's a really good point. And and I mean people who want detailed product stuff like go visit the site. We'll do kind of a product catch up on the show soon. But uh you know there's some more releases imminent as we record this that we want to include in that discussion. So um I wanted to talk about you've you've kind of gone back to the well here and done some like vintage old school Jack Forrester deep dives in the last couple weeks and uh it's been a lot of fun. I mean it's like we spend so much time on this this like product cycle where we're like we're like hamsters on a wheel just trying to keep up with what's new. Uh and the fact that you've you've managed to find the time to like dig back into the archive and not not just the archive of product, but like really look at the the sort of longer history of watchmaking and and what it means is I think really fascinating and really valuable for
Jack Forster people. Well thank you, Stephen. I have to say, uh probably most of my better ideas for stories actually come from reading uh comments on um articles that we' puveblished and seeing what people are kind of curious about, what they'd like to know more about, um, sometimes seeing where the knowledge gaps are that uh people themselves might not be aware of. And um, you know, having a chance to sort of hear a little bit more from readers uh I think um has been very helpful for me in terms of getting a handle on what it is that people might be interested in hearing about. So some of the stuff that I've been doing, some of the less product focused stuff, uh it's really been about trying to figure out what people would genuinely like to know more about and trying to put it together in a way that's interesting and engaging, uh, even for folks who uh might know a little bit about the subject, but certainly for folks who might not know that much about the subje
Stephen Pulvirent ct. Yeah, I mean I think that's one of the things that sets your stories apart is like it's really hard to know enough to write these stories. Like there there's so much back knowledge that's required. Like we couldn't just assign one of these stories to anybody and have anybody kind of like take two or three days and figure it out. But at the same time you you do a really good job kind of translating that knowledge in a way that you know, somebody who maybe doesn't know much about watch escapements, which is the first thing we're gonna talk about, can can dig into this and I think come away with it feeling like they know something, but at the same time, the like real movement nerds still feel like they've been done justice, which if there's anything movement nerds love, it's being done justice, right
Jack Forster ? Yeah, I think that's probably a universal human failing. You know, it is uh it is funny. Uh I was uh thinking about this the other night. Uh I started reading A.A. Gill's autobiography, um, the uh the Brit the late British uh food uh restaurant critic and and wide-ranging uh writer on other subjects as well, uh A.A. And uh one of the things that he says in his autobiography is that he feels really lucky to have gotten interested in writing about restaurants when he became interested in writing about restaurants because you know it wasn't that long ago that chefs were not not the media superstars they are today. Um and where you know food writing didn't command the kind of interest uh that it commands today. And you know, if I decided to become a watch journalist forty or fifty years ago, I think it would have been much more difficult. You know, watches are talked about, looked at, read about, um, to a much, much higher level nowadays than I think certainly in my entire lifetime, the level of curiosity that's there is really incredible. And I feel like we're pretty lucky to have decided to become watch writers coincidentally at a time when there's a real groundswell of interest in watches, fine watch making and watch history. Uh, because uh I'd probably be still making you know twenty-five cents a word writing for periodicals with uh you know five thousand-person circulations that nobody's heard of if it weren't for that
Stephen Pulvirent . Yeah, no, that's a really good point. Um I wan I want to make sure we we dig right into the stories to have the time, but while while we're talking about AA Gill. W'hats that Parisian restaurant that he absolutely eviscerated? Oh, best
Jack Forster best restaurant review ever. It's a Lamy Louis. He uh ends his story by saying it is entrepreneur, all things considered the worst restaurant in the world.
Stephen Pulvirent Amazing. We'll link up to that. I remember you sent me this review years ago and I've never seen it. Like it's a probably like five, six years ago now. Uh it's hilarious. It's incredible. It's do we do we have time for one quote?
Jack Forster Yeah, you can quote it. Sure. I can't bring it up and then not let you quote it. The kid the kidneys on brochette look like suppurating rat babies recovered from a nuclear reactor accident. They don't taste as nice as they sound. That's such good writing,
Stephen Pulvirent man. It's terrible sounding food, but it's such good writing. Uh all right. So speaking of here's here's my wonderful segue. Speaking of great writing, Jack. Um so you wrote you wrote this story for the site, the headlines in depth, the modern watch escapement, and how it got that way, and then in Maybe My Favorite Thing You've Done All Year, you ironically quoted yourself uh in the deck in the subhead. Uh an interest in escapements is a sign of horological maturity. Jack Forrester quoted by Jack Forrester. I'm surprised I didn't flack for that actually. I I literally like this sounds like I'm making this up. Like I literally giggled at my keyboard when I saw this. Just like it it showed up. I had not seen this when it was in draft. I did not edit this story. Uh and like I only saw it when it went live. And like I got the push notification, pulled it up on my phone, saw it and, just sat here in front of my computer giggling. I loved it. But I mean, the main gist of this story is that the escapement is A, super important, B, far more interesting than lots of people give it credit for. And C, a thing that like if you're really going to be into watches you kind of need to know at least a little bit about, right? Yeah, I mean I think the that that's that
Jack Forster that's really it. The the you know the gist of the story was that a lot of the stuff, probably 99% of the stuff that we talk about when we talk about watches is cosmetics. We talk about you know case design, we talk about dial colors, we talk about the configuration of the hands, and we talk about condition, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Um but if you start to go past appearances, and appearances are important. You know, I mean retailers say that uh I don't know what the saying is that 90% of selling a watch is having a dial that people like looking at, uh which is perfectly natural because that's mostly what we experience. Um you know, we don't actually we don't directly experience the mechanism. But uh for me it really makes uh wearing a watch and being interested in mechanical watches much richer to have a sense of how they work. And the thing that I tried to dig into in this particular story was that you know, a watch is really an attempt to solve a very, very difficult problem in practical physics. But you can't tell time with a mechanical device without having some sort of an oscillator. And ideally, you know, there's a the mathematical formula for a simple harmonic oscillator, it's not complicated. Anybody with uh high school algebra can understand it. Uh but the problem is oscillators don't operate under ideal circumstances. They are damped, as the saying goes in physics, by lots and lots of things. Gravity and friction, changes in temperature can affect how well an oscillator uh runs, you know, all of the things in the external environment uh that we don't want to have to think about when we put on a watch. We actually pay a lot of money when we're paying for a good watch uh for one that can ignore um the environment as much as possible. But all of these things are uh factors that watchmakers really struggled with over the centuries, just figuring out what to do about uh the effect of temperature on the diameter of the balance and on the elasticity of the balanced spring. That that was a couple of centuries gone. And some of the finest minds in practical physics in the world worked on these problems. And you know, you f you get into that a little bit, you find out a little bit more about it, and you really start to see your watch as uh quite this miraculous little little
Stephen Pulvirent thing. No, that's that's very true. And and I I think you know the thing you you mentioned there at the end is is worth hammering home is that you know today we think of of mechanical watches and mechanical timekeeping as as a luxury, as a hobby, but for centuries, this was like crucial to everything. It was crucial to the the growth and fall of empires. And there were the best minds in the world were were focused on these problems in a way that today there are many, many brilliant people in the watchmaking world, but like you know, your your star, you know, quantum physicist is is likely not gonna end up working at one of the watch companies that you that you know about, right?
Jack Forster Yeah. I mean the stuff that's relevant for navigation in the mid seventeen hundreds, you know, when uh John Harrison and uh people like Ferdinand Bertie were playing their trade. Uh and and you know, to your point, Stephen, and we've talked about this on the show before, the truth is for a couple of centuries there, if you didn't accurate sea clock, you did not have a blue water navy. Uh you had a coastal merchant, you had a coastal merchant marine. You couldn't be a major trading empire. And nowadays of course all of that stuff, you know, navigation, uh this is stuff is being handled by people like the physicists at NIST who work on atomic clocks that are accurate to within one second um every thirteen or fourteen billion years. So that's kinda where that's kind of where that game is now from a practical standpoint. And it's amazing how quickly that's happened. You know, I mean World War Two battleships were still going to sea with marine chronometers and sextants. So this is all stuff that's h
Stephen Pulvirent appened in the last seventy five years or so. I I wanna take a stab here and and th this'll be a great chance for me to show how much I do or don't know here and a chance for you to uh either pat me on the back or correct me embarrassingly in front of everyone on air. But to to boil this down, I mean, it took me legitimately years, and I think I'm a decently smart human being, but it took me years to of looking at watch movements all the time to like really understand how they work. And not at like a superficial level where I'm like, oh, it is a balance wheel. It moves back and forth and like that's how the watch runs. You know, but to like really kind of have a handle on it. Um and so to to boil this all down, you know, we're focused on the escapement here. Ultimately what the escapement does is it is what takes the power in the, you know, in the barrels and mets it out in the right increments so as to move the hands at the speed necessary to keep time effectively, correct? That's exactly correct. That's exactly correct. Okay. You know I So if you if you don't have an escapement and you wound a a watch or clock up and it was, you know, built as best it could be without an escapement, but with, you know, the right transfer of power, the moment you let go of that that crown or that winding key, the hands would just start spinning uncontrollably, right? Without an escapement to kind of dampen that and count out time.
Jack Forster Yeah, that's exactly correct. And in fact, uh it would be you know there's an awful lot of kinetic energy stored in uh the main spring of say an eight day clock. And uh one of those things, if it has a fully wound main spring and it breaks, it lit it's an explosive event. Um there's a lot of energy released all at once. Um and even in a watch, you end up uh you know breaking things, uh snapping teeth off of off uh trains and uh off uh gears in the going train. I mean we've all played with wind up toys and I think we've all had a uh you know the experience of winding up a wind up toy and uh you know th they don't have the most robust main springs in the world. When one of them gives out you hear this uh horrible high pitched grinding noise and uh the winding key for the toy starts to uh spin like crazy and uh never ever afterwards will your little toy robot or ducky walk across the living room rug again. That's true. Yeah. But you know you're 100% correct. The uh I mean it's simplest the simplest description of a mechanical watch or clock is that it is a device for measuring how fast the main sprint up ones
Stephen Pulvirent . Great. Love that. Um also I'm glad that I got that right because it means uh today will not be my last day at Hodinky uh which is great. Oh and by the way, you know, to
Jack Forster your to your other point, it's not actually all that easy to understand how even a simple watch works. It's not a complicated machine, but it doesn't work like anything else that uh we usually encounter on a daily basis, certainly not anymore. So kind of get your, you know, we're kind of wrapping your mind around how an anchor escapement works or Swiss lever escapement works. It's it's not not the most intuitive thing on
Stephen Pulvirent earth. Yeah. I and and it gets even more complicated when you start adding layers to it, right? Like you, know, the Swiss lever escapement is one thing, a D Town escapement is one thing. But one of the things that you outline in this story is the fact that there's actually been a decent amount of escapement innovation in the last couple of years, and by couple of years, I mean really a couple of decades, but uh in the in the span of time that we're talking about about the the evolution of horology, you know, folks like Grand Seiko, folks like Daniels, like peop people are are really really pushing on this. Like it's a thing people are still working to innovate on, despite the fact that like the technology that you know 99% of mechanical watches use is a couple hundred years old. Yeah
Jack Forster . Oh yeah. Absolutely. There has been a I mean, there's been a lot of research. There's been a lot of prototyping and there's been a lot of uh small series production of unusual escapements. Um but to actually and all of that stuff is fascinating, you know, the Girard Perigot constant escapement, which is a constant force escapement, which relies on the flexibility of silicon blade springs. Now, this is something that a lot of people have experimented with, including Zenith more recently, over the last 20 or so years. It's a really cool thing to look after. It tends to remain a bit of a niche uh field of research. So coming up with a novel escapement is already pretty difficult, but coming up with a novel escapement that is as good or better than a well-made Swiss lever escapement seems to be next to impossible based on the evidence of the past twenty years. And you know, the Daniels coaxial is I wouldn't call it a um a variation on the lever escapement, but it certainly draws on aspects of the lever escapement in order for it to do what it does, as well as aspects of the pronometer escapement. So, you know, the escapements that I covered in that story, um, there's the Daniels coaxial, there's the Swiss Lever Escapement, there's the Rolex Cronergy Escapement. Um we have a new high beat escapement from Grand Seco which is only deployed in a limited series so far, although my guess is they're gonna uh deploy that one more widely in years to come. You know, and that's kind of it. Audmar Paget had a uh the AP direct impulse escapement that came out, I think, in two thousand, and that has uh resisted industrialization as well. Um can I tell you a quick story about the coaxial? Yeah, please do. So it was a conversation that I had with a guy uh senior executive uh at Omega many years ago, a few years after they launched the coaxial, and I said, Is it driving sales for you? And he said, No, almost not at all. And I said, Really? And he said, Look, in order for you to get excited enough about the coaxial escapement, to buy a coaxial watch, first you have to know the difference between a mechanical watch and a quartz watch. Then you have to know that a mechanical watch has a thing in it called an escapement. Then you have to know how what what a lever escapement is and how it works. Then you have to know the disadvantages of the lever escapement. Then you have to know about the chronometer escapement and you have to know about the advantages and disadvantages of the chronometer escapement. Then you have to understand how much insight it took to put together an escapement that has the advantages of the lever and the chronometer escaping and the disadvantages of neither. At this point you're down to about six people on Eart
Stephen Pulvirent h. I like that. That's that's some nice uh self aware uh reflection from uh someb somebodyody up at the top. Yeah, I don't get the impression that they regret industrializing the escapement
Jack Forster . Um there are certainly performance and service advantages that it gives Omega, plus it makes their movements
Stephen Pulvirent absolutely distinctive from everybody else's. But I thought it was a fair point. Yeah. Well, uh the last thing I want to touch on before we move on is I mean, you said it it has to be better than a previous escape, not just different. And I think that's an important thing, is like you're not just building a different mouse trap, you're building a better mousetra. And additionally, it doesn't just have to provide better chronometry. It also has to be able to be built in most cases, unless you're you know, Roger Smith or Kari Vutilinen, right? Like it needs to be built at some level of scale. It needs to be serviceable. It needs to be reliable. Like it's it's there are lots of problems to be solved here in addition to just like pure timekeeping capabilities that make this a really multifaceted problem
Jack Forster . Oh absolutely. Absolutely. It's uh it has to be uh not just as good as but better as you said. And that that's tough, man. Uh you know the lever escapement's been around since 1755 for a reason.
Stephen Pulvirent Yeah. All right. Let's let's move on to another another rich area of development, which is travel watches. So you wrote this other story just because the pros and cons of the different types of travel watches. Um, when I first got into mechanical watches, I'll admit travel watches were, were kind of my entry point. Um I was in college. I didn't travel all that much. I mean I studied abroad, but like I didn't really travel all that much. I aspired to travel a lot. I'm very fortunate that now in this in this line of work I do get to travel a lot when the the world is open. And travel watches always always seem to me to just they carry this this sort of spirit and this sense of aspiration and optimism with them. And there's just something so beautiful and poetic about them. So I was really excited to see when you when you dropped this story. Is it what what is it about travel watches kind of before we get into the specifics that you find appealing
Jack Forster ? I mean what I love about the whole categories, they just fire up the imagination. You know, you uh look at or put on a watch like a you know, a paddock world timer or a Rolex GMT master, or, you know, really pretty much any multi-time zone watch, uh, and you you just start thinking about where you'd like to go, you know, um about what the experience is like of getting on an airplane and uh, you know, a few hours later you find yourself thousands, maybe tens of thousands of miles away from where you started. Um it makes you think about the world in a different way. And every watch I think every watch has that you know capability. It uh it lets you sort of live in a world in your imagination that you wouldn't necessarily live in otherwise. And uh you know, travel watches are part of the biggest dream of all, which I think is the dream of uh of exploring, the dream of seeing the world. It's so deeply, deeply ingrained in human character to explore. We we just don't seem to be able to help ourselves. For better or worse, we don't seem to be able to help ourselves. Um but I think that's what travel watches speak to. There's a fantastic, fantastic book by Bruce Chapman that I read years and years ago when I was in college called The Songlines. And his thesis in the book is basically that human beings are unhappy if they don't walk a certain amount. You know, we're uh an inherently parapetic species. We're born travelers. And on a really, really profound level, I think that's what travel watches speak to. New horiz
Stephen Pulvirent ons, you know? Yeah, I I completely agree with you. And and I think that speaks to something about watches more generally, which is now that the mechanical wristwatch doesn't really have a sort of like functional it it is not a functional necessity. I won't say it's n it doesn't have a functional purpose, it does, but it's not a a necessity. It's i these things have the ability to captivate our imaginations and to make us want to be different and to make us push ourselves and to make us see ourselves in different ways. And I I think like you said, travel watches do that really acutely. Um and and I wonder, you know, we won't walk through all of the types of travel watches here because people can just go read the article, which we'll we'll link up in the notes. But um what what is your favorite category of travel watches that you that you talked about here?
Jack Forster Uh okay so I notoriously chicken out when asked questions like this. Um and I I seem to be incapable of writing an entry for our uh editors roundups and picking an honest favorite. If you go back and look at the ones that I've written and they all start out, Well, uh there's so many I love, uh they're all so wonderful, uh it's really hard to pick one. Um But it is. It is. It's hard. It's hard to fairly I got you. I love them all. Games Stacy likes to call flyer GMT watches. For me, are the ones that work best when I travel because you just uh you reset the hour hand when you land, you don't have to stop the watch. I have never in my life traveled anywhere that has less than a full hour offset from GMT, although if I did I probably would find myself slightly annoyed by the way that all I think all uh so-called flyer watches are set up. But you know, going from my you know I go mostly to Europe every once in a while to Japan, you know, like you said when the world is open. China wants in a blue moon. And uh all of those places a flyer GMT just works. You I I look at it and I know instantly without having to do any mental acrobatics, what local time is and what home time is. And uh I there's nothing I love more than a true world timer, and you can get them in an enormous I mean I talked about the paddock world timer in the story, but of course there's great world timers from other brands like Montblanc which, are much, much more affordable. I mean, more affordable than a Patrick Philippe Gold Timer, admittedly, is not setting the bar terribly. Hi, but you know more affordable. I wasn't I wasn't gonna give you a hard time about that, but yes, fair. But at the same time I feel like for most travelers from a practical standpoint, a flyer GMT is probably the easiest to live with and the easiest to understand. You know, it's three o'clock in the morning, you're jet lagged, you've had to go to meetings all day and you know, maybe a couple of events in the evening and you just don't want to have to think too hard when you look at your watch to see if it's still okay to call the famil
Stephen Pulvirent y. Yeah. No, I d I totally agree with you. And I you know, I owned a Rolex GMT master of vintage one. I know you've you've owned one as well. And while it's not if you're if we're talking about true vintage ones, it's not a flyer GMT where the the hand itself is adjustable. But you get a similar result with the adjustable bezel. And there really is just something so nice and easy about that um and it it sort of in a funny way it sort of makes you feel at home in other places because you don't have that like there's something jarring about looking down at your wrist and being like, oh my god, I don't I don't understand what this is. What time is it? Whereas when you look down and and it feels familiar, it it makes the other place that you're in feel familiar in a way, which I I like. Um I I liked your categorization of the it looks like a world timer, but it's a two-time zone watch watch. Um which is funny because this is like a whole like this has been a a bugaboo of mine for years, are these watches that like they have city rings and they sometimes are marketed as world timers but like they're not world timers. Sometimes they're actually called world timers. Yeah sometimes they are and I mean props to you know the three that you have images of in the story are uh from JLC, Langa, and Gnomos, and none of them market them as as world timers. They do all market them as travel watches. But I think there's something fun about these watches, not just because they're they're travel watches, but also they allow you to kind of dip your toe into the idea of having like a really complicated watch without actually having a really complicated watch, which means A, the prices are a little lower, B service and upkeep isn't gonna be as as onerous, you know, like, but you get to kind of dip your toe. Like if you look at this longa or like the JLC geographic, like they look like complicated watches. But they're actually extremely functional and practical. And there's there's something fun for me about that kind of juxtaposition there. Yeah, actually that particular category
Jack Forster was kind of the impetus for the whole story because every time we uh run a story about a watch with a city ring, whether it's a world timer or not, the question comes up is you know, wait a wait a second, is this is this a real world timer? What's the difference between this and uh a quote unquote real world timer? So, you know, just another way of sort of saying uh I got a little bit of flack in the comments from people who I mean naturally I could not talk about every single multi-time zone watch out there, much less every single category and subcategory. But there were a few people who felt bad that their favorites had been left out. Um you know, like the uh the call, it's not in the catalog now, but the Calatrava dual time is one of my favorite two times on watches, the Saxonia dual time is another one. I always thought I I actually thought about including them as a separate category, but they kind of seemed like basically flyer GMTs to me in that they have independently settable local time hour hands that move in uh one hour increments. Um but yeah I could have I came fairly c I
Stephen Pulvirent came close to breaking that out as a separate category. May maybe there's a follow up story here all about dress travel watches. Oh, there you go. All right. So spe speaking of hypotheticals here, let's move on to the last thing I want to recap, which uh is from a little longer ago. It's from about a month ago. Um, but when you first brought this idea up, I thought it was like one of the most fun things we've done in a long time and I was super excited to see you put it together. And that is the story just because four What ifs that could have changed watchmaking history forever. Welcome to Bizarro World. Um, which is like this is the sort of thing that like, and I'm not, I'm not trying to like blow smoke here, Jack. You know, you know I'm not that kind of guy, but like this is just so fun and it's it's the sort of thing that like only you could have written. Like this this story requires so many strange interconnected types of knowledge and also the right mind to be able to draw the connections between those things in a in a certain way. And like I really just like can't imagine anybody else having put this together. I mean, it's a little pathetic. You know, one of the prerequisites for the stor
Jack Forster y is uh having having spent a s significant chunk of your childhood trying to catch episodes of Doctor Who on public television. But yeah, it was really it was a lot of fun to put together. You think about these things sometimes I suppose you write about watches long enough, you write about any subject long enough and you start to say to yourself well what if you know I mean what if you know um what if Napoleon had won the Battle of Waterloo or whatever and in watches and watchmaking the uh the current horological landscape has been shaped by a lot of macro historical events that usually don't get talked about. Uh so the um the Huguenot uh diaspora, the Protestant diaspora from France into Switzerland had a lot to do with the fact that watchmaking was established in Switzerland uh as strongly as it was, although there was certainly a clock making industry prior uh prior to the Protestant diaspora. But you know, things like that, I started wondering, you know, like what would Abraham Louis Briget say if he saw you know the status of the turbion today? And these things kind of like rolled around in my head for years and years and years. And I finally thought to myself, wouldn't it be fun to put together a story about uh what would happen if some of the things that have shaped the modern watchmaking landscape had not happened? And then I thought to myself, Well, wouldn't it be fun to phrase this in the form of a narrative that kind of includes the reader as a character in the story, you know, a time traveler, a watch enthusiast time traveler who actually goes back and makes the mistake of telling Brigade what's happened to the turbulent, discouraging him forever from inventing it and making him uh work to essentially create a company uh that was a um you know an 18th century Rolex because he got so fed up with complicated watchmaking. That kind of thing. That kind of thing. It was uh it was surprisingly difficult to write too. I got about uh three quarters of the way through it. Well because you know it's like a time travel story and it it turns out um and I say this as a lifelong science fiction fan it turns out writing a time travel story that doesn't completely lose the reader and become totally implausible halfway through is quite difficult. So this thing this thing went through Jack Yeah, this thing it it actually went through several revisions uh in order to make the sort of plot line work. And given more time with it, I probably would have uh been able to
Stephen Pulvirent Which which are the four the four sections? So the four sections here are you talk Louis XIV into not revoking the Edict of Nantes, uh, Hans Wilt Wilsdorf stays in London, Abraham Louis Burguet, inventor of existentialism, and Nicholas G. Hayek sends you back to the future. Which of those four sections was for you the most fun to write
Jack Forster ? Oh my gosh. I think the most actually the most difficult to write was uh the one about Wilsdorf because uh I think was really the tax structure in the UK versus the tax structure in Switzerland that made him relocate. And there's just like no way that uh in if there's ten billion parallel universes in uh all of them but one. Uh the tax structure um in the UK is does not change. Um I think the most the most fun for me to write was probably the last one, the one involving Nicholas G. Hayek. And that was fun for a number of reasons. Number one, I thought it was kind of a neat way to wrap up the whole narrative and kind of reset the timeline. So that was that was the biggest problem that I had. It was like, all right, how how do we reset the timeline to normal? Uh and it was also fun because of all the individuals that you talk to in the story, he's the only one that I ever met in person. And uh geez, you know, I I miss the guy. Um I really do. He was uh he was always such great copy. Uh and he loved talking to the press. And he was profane and opinionated and loved watches. He loved business. He had a real he had such uh a an absolute passion for what he was doing and a and a crazy imagination. You know, this is the guy who uh took Brigade from a brand that was really, really on the skids and turned it into one of the great modern luxury wristwatch brands, actually went to the trouble of remaking the Marie Antoinette Grand Complication. Um and I interviewed him maybe a total of three times, three Basel Worlds before he before he passed away, but he was such a larger than life character. And uh I miss his eccentricities. I mean there's still plenty of those in the Swiss watch industry. Um but I feel I was gonna say but you know it it's it it really used to be the what you know when the when uh when people like mr hayek were were around and were basically reinventing uh mechanical urology back in the 90s and the early aughts uh man you had to you had to have a a You know, selling a mechanical watch in the mid-1990s, early early nineteen nineties, it was not such an easy thing to do. And uh he had a sense of showmanship uh you know Jean-Claude Bivard is the same way, you know, gentlemen of the same generation. And both of them um, you know, uh have a wonderful sense of the showmanship necessary in order to sell mechanical watches. And it was just uh it was just a ton of fun to write about him as if he were still around.
Stephen Pulvirent That's great. Well I'm gonna recommend anybody uh listening to this, if you haven't read these three stories, they're linked up in the show notes, they're linked up on the post on the site. Uh go check them out. They're super fun. To me, this is like quintessential hodinky stuff here. Uh thank you for joining us, Jack. Thanks for going through this with me. And uh I hope you I hope you've got more more cooking
Jack Forster . Oh yeah. Always always more. As long as there are uh questions in the comments, I'm gonna have ideas for stories. Talk to you soon. Thank you, Steve. Good to see you
Stephen Pulvirent . Up next, we have my conversation with builder, artist, and photographer Adam Morelli. Hey Adam, good to see ya. Good to see you too, Steven. How you doing? Good, good. It's been uh I think I saw you not too long before lockdown started, but it feels like a hundred years ago by this point. Every everything feels like it was about a decade ago. I mean you're you're like me. You're usually in some like far flung corner of the globe. Have you been staying like basically put in New York City? For the most part. I mean I we escaped a little bit upstate, a little bit to the beach, but really short stuff. But compared to I think last year I had 17 trips on a year. Okay. So I this probably about a similar something something that you're running. So being home for a few months straight just feels ooh it feels Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure it also like it affects. I mean, we'll get into this, but like you're you're a photographer who's whose like bread and butter is being out in the field, like out with people. Uh so I would imagine it impacted your your practice there a lot uh over the last couple months. It did it did. I mean, I think one of the things that this lockdown period has given me is a profound appreciation for the ability to go out and socialize with work outside of the studio. Yeah. I mean, so so maybe we start there then. I mean, so you're you and I, I mean, we first met through watches but you know we're both photographers and we we spend a lot of the time when we hang out talking about about photography. Um you know your your photography is also a part of kind of a bigger artistic practice. You know, you're also a painter and a builder. Um, you know, but but how did you first end up a photographer? How did how did that start for you? I started with a camera in university. Okay. It was not I grew up in a house with cameras. Both of my parents were my father had worked for Minolta in his twenties. My mother was an amateur shooter. I mean there there are some really uh uncomfortably top tier portrait sessions of me in my younger years because they shot a lot. I think as a result, I had no interest in photography. That was the annoying thing my parents did. And when I got into university, uh, we had to do painting and drawing as a foundations. Sculpture really caught my attention and the references like when I was wanted to do like field sketches, it started to make sense to use a camera. And one of the professors kind of encouraged me, like, well, you can do this as a double concentration. It's weird. We don't have many like sculptor photo like kind of double majors. But if you want, like you can do it. And that it it started as field work for sculpture research. Hmm. It's funny. I I mean that makes a lot of sense. I can't really think of too many photographer sculptors. I guess maybe like Hiroshi Sugimoto, but like other than that, like I can't really think of any. It I guess it doesn't come up that much, but for a lot of the things that I've been interested in, uh the field research, a camera works well. Like it's fine to make underwater paintings, but one doesn't paint underwater. Like the field research the camera really works much better for that. Um so I've when I was in school, the aesthetic for a lot of photography was it was really dry. It was this like sort of Stephen Shore, uh like Gersky was like a rich character in comparison. Um And a lot like I remember some of the photo work that like Dan Graham did. Like I remember back in the 90s, Dan Graham had an installation at the top of Dia in Chelsea. And I thought the sculpture was amazing. And then I looked up his photo work and he'd done some photo work in New Jersey, and it was like, I mean, drier than dry. So I figured like, well, if I'm gonna do the photo thing, like I might as well learn how to like use the thing, like learn how to use the tool, which from from a s from a builder's standpoint or a sculptor standpoint, like you want to learn how to use an acetylene torch because if you don't know how to use it, that you're entering into a world of problems. Like not knowing how to use a regular arm saw. Like there are risks involved. Right. Not knowing how to use a camera doesn't really have any risks. It's just the work tends to be kind of limited because you can't get out of the little black box what you want. And now a word from this week's sponsor. If you've ever watched Mad Men, you'll no doubt remember the iconic scene that firmly establishes that an Accutron watch is not a timepiece. It's a conversation piece. Wow, Freddy. That's a home run. 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For more, visit AccutronWatch.com and subscribe to the Accutron Show wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, let's get back to the show. just as guilty of as everybody else. But like you ultimately like you need to be able to do a thing with it in a way that like other quote unquote like luxury objects or like you know gadgets you don't necessarily need to. But there's there's like definitely a learning curve there that's kind of born out of necessity. Real I mean it is. It's been it follows a lot of analog processes. I mean I think like learning how to drive a car on a manual transmission. Like you know I I've m more recently learned how to ride a motorcycle. There I'm not using a quick shifter. I think when when you understand how something is supposed to work and you're responsible for all the steps, the the thing educates you. It really like it teaches you a lot. And in order to get those two things in sync, which they you do, you get them in sync. It's not that hard. Um, but it starts to give you a command over the things that you produce in a way that is hopefully interesting for the people watching, but I'm sure as you imagine, it's fulfilling on the on the on the maker end where you're like, ooh, got it. Like and I got it again. Like, and now I'm getting it most of the time. Right. Yeah, that moment where like a happy accident becomes a thing you can do on demand is is where you really know that you like you've locked it in. Like you've you've got control over it it's no longer that you're just kind of like riding riding the wave and hoping for the best sure I mean the the automatic part doesn't it's not very fun it's more like video games, which I never took a too much I was never really that into. It's very much a a simulation of something. And I I mean it it just it never tickled me. That's interesting. I I mean I guess then for you is making art, whether it's a sculpture or a photograph or a painting, is is part of the pleasure in doing it kind of like gaining that mastery over over the process and then exercising that? Gaining some proficiency over the making part I feel like what that does is it gets the clunkiness of me out of the way. That's like the clunkiness is like the in the physical inability for me to be able to do something. To get to a working point where like I can do with the material what I'd like, it's so that the idea, which is this invisible thing no one can see, and then whatever I output, I'm part of that process, but you're not looking at my stumbling over it. And that's what clunky painting or bad photography is. It's like it's still me fumbling around in front of you. So I like I'm not like a real I don't see myself as like an incredibly technical person. I think my view on making things is a little more macro. Like I'm a fairly good woodworker. I'm like a decent welder. I can work with glass. I'm pretty good with mold making. I'm pretty good at photography. I'm not a master printer. But the the language that floats between those, I have enough of a working knowledge after you know this we'll say few years of it, um that I'm no longer stumbling over the physical aspects of it so that the idea and the image can c pass through smoothly. Yeah. I mean I is there is there a way in which maybe like you said, okay, you're you're a decent photographer and not a master printmaker, but you have all of these other skills and experiences and proficiencies. Are there ways in which you think like, okay, let's say you're you're making a photograph with the goal of of making a print of that photograph. Are there ways in which being like good at photography and good at printing, but also being good at those 10 or 12 other things, maybe is actually an advantage or or produces a different effect than if you were like just really amazing at photography and printmaking? Yeah, I think the advantage is in the seeing. I mean having a having a hands-on material understanding like for photographing craftsmen. Uh a lot of the craftsmen that I photographed I mean across the globe, they tend to make the same they have the same complaints about journalists that they will often ask them like, hey, do that again of what they're actually doing. So knowing how things knowing how things get put together or taken apart, it it allows I can't I know what I'm looking at. Like I'm not just observing if I go, if we go to the ballet, I have no clue what I'm looking at. I can't tell what's coming next. I only know things as they happened, and even when they did, I have no idea what they mean. Because I don't know anything about the ballet. But I can go into a you know a workshop that's manufacturing a Japanese temple and like knowing the parts of the process, I have good sense as to what I'm looking at and also what's coming next, like how these pieces are gonna put themselves together. So that I've always been fascinated in that creation process where you go from raw material to something else. I mean, in a few instances it will go to something magical, but just even the point at which it stops being like a piece of wood and starts becoming a beam. Like there's a moment where that shift happens and there's something that kind of defines that transition and those moments of transition, if I wasn't familiar, I had been in those spaces when I didn't know what was going on and I missed most of it. And as I learned more about building specifically, I was like, oh yeah, like now I know what I'm looking at. Now I've like I've laid it out and designed it and sometimes put it together. Does that make sense? Yeah, no, I I think that makes a lot of sense. I think you know it's it's it's a more complex answer to like a really a really basic principle, which is like if you're an artist, like you need to know your subject. Like it's it's really difficult to make good art about a thing that you don't understand or that you have no relationship to. And I I think, you know, your your cultural photography, which which I'd love to discuss that term in a second, but um your your work about craftspeople I think is is so compelling specifically because it feels almost it it's apparent to me in the photography that like you understand craft as a thing. Um and and it's not you're not a photojournalist who is just sent on assignment and told like, hey, there's this amazing knife maker, go take, you know, four pictures that we can run on page A six of, you know, tomorrow's paper. Right. Like it' its's a very different, much more immersive approach. Um so yeah, I I think I agree entirely, but I I want to talk a little bit, you know, you you kind of classify your photography practice as as cultural photography, uh, which is a term that I I don't think gets talked about a lot. Um can you tell us like what you mean by cultural photography and how it stands kind of in relation in opposition to to other types of photography that people might know about? So I got stuck in this position that I think a lot of creatives will empathize with. Where you go to a party, someone says, hey, what do you do? Insert, answer. And I had a really hard time explaining the work that I was doing. And people would say, like, oh, like you're like a documentary maker. And it the term it just never really sat well because the subject matter that I was engaging had like a little bit of architecture, a little bit of like religious philosophical belief practices, some still lives, and some portraiture. So it was this weird genre blend. Um and I I I went and looked at science as a reference because science is very good at classifying things and they make wonderful little divisions and subsets and I stumbled upon cultural anthropology. And I thought, oh, this is interesting. This is like a division of anthropology focusing on the cultural aspects of things, some of which you can see, and some of which you can't. And a lot of the things that I found myself photographing with the craftsman had to do with looking at how did a belief system of a culture or of an individual inform what it was that they would output. And acknowledging that some of the things you just can't see. But they have a real influence in the way that they do things. Like you it you can't see economy in terms of the way that someone uh handles material. But you can see the output and see that that is a very economic use of that material. But y especially working with people who I don't always speak the language. I speak craft. Like I can go to places and found like the Thai, Indian, Japanese, German, Italian, like we don't have to be able to compute communicate linguistically, but seeing the way that they handle materials and make decisions, that portion of it is that's a language. Like craftsmanship is a language globally. I've seen craftsmen interact where they don't speak the same language. They might be Irish and Japanese, but they can deal with the object and understand that in a way. And it it Japan opened up an understanding of that that I hadn't expected. They like it taught me a lesson accident accidentally or not intentionally. That at first just seemed to me like Japanese people being difficult. And it was you know, when I the the first year that I went over the one of the knife makers who I was with, he's Japanese. His apprentice at the time was French, came from a blacksmithing family. And Eric, who was the apprentice, he spoke decent Japanese, but there was still, you know, there's a lot lost there. And the Japanese for the most part, there is a bit of a tradition within within apprenticeship of like not asking questions. You watch. And if you have three juniors, the better observer is going to be the one who's going to advance. So the better you can see, which I think photographers can really relate to, the better they can see and watch and understand through their eyes, the further they will advance. And I thought, man, that is a brutal way to learn. Like it'd be nice to just say, like, that doesn't make any sense. Can you explain why did you do that that way? And at first I thought it was in line with like a harsh discipline that like there's a zen backing to some of the practices that I've seen in Japan. But then what I realized was that eventually what happens is master of the shop dies. And if you're the apprentice and you are presented with an object, the same way that like an archaeologist might find something, you need to speak to that object. You need to understand how that thing can speak to you and you there's no one to ask. You have to be able to feel it, smell it, understand the material properties so that in order for an inanimate object to speak to you, if you've been trained in making where you don't rely on questions, it's a tough education, but at the end you're really good at having objects speak to you. Yeah that's that's a r really interesting way to think about learning and to think about like knowledge transmission. Um, you know, it's it's much more of a sort of like uh I think it's it's very foreign to most of us and I don't mean foreign in like it comes from a different country, but I think like so much of the way we're taught to learn is through asking questions. And it's it's a really like there's a long Western tradition of of sort of like dialectical learning uh through speaking. But this is this is a similar idea. It's just through through sort of different sensory encounters and with an object instead of a person. And I wonder to what degree your photography, I mean, you mentioned that there's so much that's like not spoken and not verbalized, and like things about culture that that are not seeable. To what degree is is your photography trying to like bridge that gap and make those things seeable? The aim with the photography is to make it like easily digestible. I I don't have the artistic standpoint of art being difficult to take in. And any of us who have ever been to a museum or a gallery and read that big thing on the side of the wall, or like gone up to a gallery counter and like read read through the artist statement or the press release on the show and just thought like, what did I just read? And what does that have to do with anything on the wall? Like I don't think it needs to be that confusing. It can match things can be very straightforward and easy to understand. And the m photography got me out of the art school mentality where everything is like someone just threw up a thesaurus on a piece of paper. Yeah. And it's been like hey I made this thing I think it's interesting I've been working on for a long time let's everyone go like let's all come in and it the the process with photography and with photo workshops was I would often get people who would say like, I have no art background. I'm into it, but I haven't spent twenty years studying art. So I don't really know heads or tails. And I said, it's fine, we'll get you up to speed quickly because uh there is I think some similarity with the watch community is like when you have an educated community, it's fun. It's like like people get the references, they get all the all the work and all of the things that go into the the world of it. All of a sudden that language unpacks itself and globally it just expands in a way like I'm sure you like you've gone to places and met people who you sit down, you've ha you've never met them and you just find yourself in this like watch vortex and you're like, How do we how do we get here? Thirty years ago this wouldn't have happened. Right, no, no I. I agree a hundred percent. And and I mean I think you're you're right, like the similarities between, you know, people who are are into you know pr any sort of like niche thing, you know, and that can be a big niche or a small niche, but like whether you're into watches or or photography or art or sculpture or craftsmanship or whatever, like if you find other people, there there is always that kind of like secret language that that bonds people. Um d did you end up I mean, like I said at the top of the show, like we met through the watch world uh at at the beginning. Did you end up in watches through this love of craftsmanship or did you come to it some some other way? The first thing that got me interested in watches was Davisobel's longitude book. That's a good way to get into watches. It was I was house sitting for an ex-girlfriend at the time and um I I I picked up the book and the thing that caught me at first was that Harrison was uh woodworker. And when he was making his first versions of the age series, he used tropical woods, which have really high natural oil content. So they would be self-lubricating to some extent. Now only a wood guy would know that. You'd have to know that like like Cohen, Teak, like they those those tropical woods which are a nightmare to cut. I mean they're they're so infused with oil that the sawdust that comes off of them, it like it clumps, it doesn't even go up in the in the air. It's a very like cutting tropical woods is a it's a weird tool destroying thing. So I that was the first portion of the book where I thought like, oh, this is kind of an interesting thing. Um and I've had an ocean I have had a weird relationship with water for my entire life. Um and it it struck me that like his ability to take he was a woodworker, he was not an aristocrat, he did not have the backing to really go into this problem, but he was an innovative thinker and knew materials, and for him to go from a wooden model to like the H1, which I think was a three by three by three cube. By the time he gets to the H3 and we get almost a pocket watch, to me it was fascinating that like, wow, the ocean in some ways made the watch. Like the what the that material shift from land to water all of a sudden took this device, which you think about old clocks and towers and like it motivated it to be this thing that was like in your hand. And I thought, wow, that was interesting. And then immediately looked them up and was like, oh, could never afford these. In fact, these aren't even So the initial, you know, the initial buy-in to watches was this it was his work that I found really interesting. It wasn't I didn't have like a grandfather who had a watch that was a th like it that this wasn't a thing. I only learned I only learned a few years ago that my my my father had he bought a Seiko in Bermuda in like nineteen seventy eight that he's had forever. He's just had it serviced this year. And it's the entire time. But I didn't like it was it wasn't that like the the grandfather narrative that a lot of people have or the father narrative. It wasn't for me it was that book. That book was opened something up and has connected a thread through my interest in watchmaking almost ever since. Yeah. I mean you said you're you were also like you've had this sort of obsession with with the ocean. I mean were you ever like, you know, staring at Cousteau's wrist or whatever and trying to figure out what what was going on there, or was that just not on your radar? Only later. Okay. Like at first, the the relationship, I was into the the water and like particularly underwater because it was when I say it has strange relationship with water. When I was a kid, I I crawled into a sump pump and drowned. Um so my initial like I was terrified of water as a child. It was not like like I had like I saw the ocean, just loved it from day one. That is a very casual way to tell that story. Well that was I was too young to remember it. My father revived me. But that was that was the early like that was water from the beginning so I didn't like lakes I didn't like oceans and then oceans worse than lakes because they had waves and so it was not it wasn't until I was probably like seven or eight, um, when I learned that like you could go under a wave. Like before it broke you could go under it. And we had a family family like took us in the water and like I remember like going under and that feeling that power of the wave and then like passing through it. This was like there's a world up here and then there's a world here. And that's where like once that happened, I feel like people like fed Cousteau. Like they're like, oh, you like this, then check this out. And that's when it kind of picked in. It wasn't until much later with watches that I went back and rewatched Cousteau to see what Falco and Dee Dee and Cousteau were wearing on the wrist to say like, ooh, ooh, like you can see it like it's right in the corner there. Like so it's been a little circuitous, but that's where the that's where the relationship with the water started. Okay. And then and then you know, you read longitude, right? And you're fascinated by Harrison. Like where where do you go from there? Like how do you go from being interested in H three to like putting a watch on your wrist. Uh that that connected to um Daniels. I think George Daniels was like the next historical step. Um and George was at the towards towards the end of his life. And from Daniels, it kind of went back to Reggae and then got up to Jorn. And it was like, ooh, he's alive. Like that one, that one we refined. Um and then there was a bit of a detour to Roger Smith. So it were it were it was in the people who made watches and who were dealing with time uh in this in in a way that they approached it as a craftsman. I mean Daniels was like he was kind of an enigma in his early life. There's nothing about Daniels early life that would have led anyone to believe he would have become the watchmaker he was in his later life. He was not like he was a street kid. To some extent from from what I know of Jorn's background, like there's a bit of that too. Little like you know, rebellious child doesn't do quite well in school. Um and that's a narrative that I recognize from art. I mean you've Carvaggio was a nightmare. I mean he was an absolute nightmare. Michelangelo was terrible. Like these these young teenage kids who had all this energy and all of this enthusiasm for making things just they must have been unbearable to be around. And I'm sure there was some there was something about that where I thought like, oh well, these guys found a home or they made a home for themselves in a way through the things that they made. And that appealed to me. Yeah, that's a really interesting way to think about it. That like there's there's almost. And I think watches, you know, have this in a in a their own sort of like peculiar special way, but like if you if you can be in the watch world in some way, whether it's by being, you know, what the the folks you've talked about, like some of the greatest watchmakers of all time, um, or or in any number of other ways, like you you can kind of make a home for yourself. Like this is a community and a and an industry that is sort of like m supportive enough and small enough in certain ways that like it it really can become its own universe. Yeah, it was there was a line that um you know the guy Dave Hickey, he's an art historian? Yeah. Hickey Hickey was in a documentary on Warhol, a fantastic doc documentary that um Rick Burns did. It's the brother of Ken. Okay. Ken's stuff's a little more known. Um but Hickey said that Warhol, who in watching the documentary, I initially had very little affinity for, but was like amazed by the end of it. Hickey said that in a Warhol understood that in America you don't get up and lead. You move to the edge, declare at the center, and let the world reorganize around you. And that's kind of what Warhol did with the factory. And I think a lot of the outliers in art and in watches, I mean in in making, sometimes in eccentric sports, sports that used to not be so mainstream, that y that you do that. And there's enough people now that support that like you that you go out to the periphery and all of a sudden there are a bunch of people who gravitate around you. And it gives a home for those outliers in a really, I think in a much more survivable way than it might have been Yeah. That's amazing. That's an amazing quote. I'm gonna have to go watch this documentary now. Uh we'll we'll link up uh in the show notes to it too so that people can go can go find it. I mean so you me you mentioned that when you you were kind of following this path. When you got to Jorn, one of the things that was exciting to you was like, oh, he's he's alive. Like I can go find this guy. You went and found him, right? So I sort of I fortunately he was coming to New York. Um so I could go to the boot the Jorn world is very small and I found it to be like my sort of favorite collector base of people. And it's a group of the collectors in New York, they're it's absurdly knowledgeable. I mean they've they've grown up with the with the brand. So they they know it like nearly from inception. Um and they get excited when someone is into it. And the idea that like Jorn was still making, like that he wasn't it wasn't done. Like I've I've really appreciated the way that he will continue to make things that sometimes in a commercial view people think, oh, that doesn't make any sense. It's like, well, as an artist, there are loads of things you make that don't make sense, but in order to work through an idea, though some of those ideas come to light. Yeah. It's a little, it's slightly different where someone can like buy the piece of that, but I like that you can actually see him and his authorship working out the ideas over the years where you see like details of like details of dials, details of case design, the the crowns, the movements, the assemblies, like there are parts where you can see him like he's working on it, he's working on it, he's working on it. And then there'll be like a big jump forward. And some people they'll love it, other people won't. And to me, I don't really it's not so much about liking it or not liking it. I just enjoy that that's happening and that we're able to see it work itself out and he's not afraid to make not gonna say a mistake, but he's not afraid to make something that somebody else might not like. Yeah. Yeah, I think you know, Jordan sits at this really interesting point where like it's a brand, but it is a person. It's like, you know, a commercial entity. It's like a real company. They have like a small factory. But yet everything's still like pretty handmade and it all feels like it very much comes from from the mind of one man. And it's that's a tough that's a tough balance to strike. I mean like on one hand, most watch brands are either like, you know, Brigade, which makes amazing watches, Patek Philippe makes amazing watches, Vachron Constantin, amazing watches, but like they're designed by committee. They're produced, you know, through the assemblage method. Like it's not one guy or one small team making one thing. And then at the opposite end of the extreme, you have like, you know, Roger Smith and Kari Vutilin and like these these like almost like auteurs in a certain way. Um Jorn to me kind of like does both at the same time. I don't know. Like does that d do you agree or or where do you kind of stand on that? I mean my sense of it is that there are I encounter this more in building than I do in art. In that if you make if you lay out a design for something, like in the in the process where I'm in in building. I will get information from an architect or an engineer. And then the crews who are going to be building it, I might not be doing like the physical labor. So when you have to translate a language from something like theoretical into something actual, there are ways that you can make it like very difficult for someone else to be able to repeat. I think what Jean does an interesting job of doing is like knowing he might make a hundred of these in a year. So you there's a certain level of the design where it can't be so idiosyncratic that only you can do it. That's a that's that's a manufacturing problem. And if you know like for the for the really high end pieces, like okay, he might have a heavy hand in a in a number of those because they are that much more complicated. But you can also design things in a way that you can lay something out for somebody and like a crew can go through and they can they can achieve that for what you need it to be. Like not I I don't need an artisan to put together my toothbrush. You know, like this for the thing that you need it to do or the enjoyment that you get out of it, there's a balance between like melting your own gold and polishing your own bridge. Like you could spend your whole life melting gold bridges instead of actually producing watches that like make them. And that's you know Rogers got it at a different scale, Jorne's got it at a different scale. And artists you have artists who have forty assistants, artists who do everything themselves. So I think it takes a little trying to see like what part what part like when I wake up in the morning am I tickled by and what part am I like oh god like dude, like I don't wanna polish another blade. Like I just I want someone else that I'm over that. Yeah. So you gotta think about what one of the things I wanted to talk to you about, because this is this is one of the questions I get from people more than maybe any other. I mean it's definitely one of the top like five questions I get is is are watches art or are they craft? And I think I know people who who fall strongly on both sides, people who refuse to give an answer, people who say, oh, it's both, it's whatever. Like where where do you stand on that question? Is is a watch a piece of art or is it the production of craftsmanship? Or is it is it neither? Is it something else entirely? I mean there might be some that are. That are art. That are. Yeah. Okay. It's there's a there's a small if you if you try this, you might have to do this online. I don't know if you can do this anymore. There used to be paintings of salons from the 19th century and 18th century, probably even 17th century to some extent. So the painting would be of a bunch of people in a room with paintings around them. Right. Yeah. So there were tons of paintings on the wall. Now very few of those paintings on those walls are interesting. They're presented as art, but really they're like art production. Like the vast majority of things that get produced, like they're kinda like stage sets for art. I don't really I mean you look at history, there are a handful that make it out that are really like art with the big capital obnoxious A. There there are those. Um and then the rest is like they're like art light or art ish. Like they look like art, but they don't really do the thing that art they're they're not alive. That like that thing where a material assembly kind of lives over time and is alive to future generations, it's really quite hard to do that. So on the production side, like I don't it's not a distinction I make that often because I'm not an I'm not an art historian and I'm not a cultural designator. I don't anoint people. This is like what critics do, where they say, like, ah, you have done your thing so well, you make art. Like that cake is art. I I don't do the anointing thing. History does the anointing for you if it's any good. So So it's a thing that like I don't get particularly bothered in. I find that there are watchmakers who are really interesting. They operate like artists in the way their studios run. I mean Jordan at the beginning, he took in a bunch of commissions. He took in deposits and down payments on pieces he hadn't produced yet. This is not very different than how most artists in the fifteen and sixteen hundreds really worked. Yeah. Like it functions. Well yeah, painting also has a sort of function if it works right. Um so it's not it's not a distinction that I spend a huge amount of time like bludgeoning people over the head being like that one that's not art like that you can't have a car that's art that's ridiculous like I I mean y yeah sure you could. It's hard. It's really hard. But you like you can Yeah, I mean I wonder uh to what extent that answer, which I think is a great answer, is is like a polite and more informative way to say, like, this is a stupid question to be asking. Like this is not like to to have that be the metric by which you measure something good bad or indifferent like it's it's just like a it's a bad yardstick you know is is that is that kind of how you feel about it? I mean it's like what bookshelf are you gonna put the book on? Like does it go on the art bookshelf or does it go on the mechanics bookshelf? Like that's the that's like the classification thing where I think if you go into an artist's studio, like you'll find it's just filled with books and they're all like the the way in which they're arranged. I mean here's you talk about dysfunctional. Like my classification of the bookshelf is that's how I So so for people uh listening who can't see this because we're on a zoom call while we record this, uh Adam just pivoted his computer and his bookshelf is arranged by color. Oh I don't care if you're art or not. I just remember like, oh, you're an orange book. You're the good orange one. Yeah. Hey, I mean like that that I think is what makes like different artists and different craftspeople and different producers of all things interesting, right? Like if we all thought about and classified things and and looked at things the same way, like we'd all be making the same things. Like what makes you know, we'll stick with Jorn here, what makes like a watch from FP Jorn so interesting is that it it isn't built or conceived or thought of in the same way as any other watches, really. Like, even though he's deeply inspired by people like Brigade, like it's his watches are not new Burger watches, they're watches from Francois Paul Jorn. Yeah, and they I think one part of that question that might hold more attention for me personally. And I mean it might not hold for other people, is that when making something mirrors back an understanding of life, this to me is very interesting. And I've found with makers that often the process in which they deal with materials deal with creation, like the way they create things and the way they deal with the materials, they use their their craft or their art as a way to develop a philosophy about their life. They understand the limitations of things. They understand how things last, how they wear out, how they break. There's sort of a it's like a tactile quality with how you approach life, which when you go through an apprentice system or you make things in a workshop, not everyone does, but you have the opportunity to really extract a philosophical understanding as to how you would live from your work. And this differs from like you'd mentioned earlier, that foreign concept. If someone slaps down an instruction manual and says, by the end of this class, like you're gonna know how to do this, like it's given to you. A lot of craftsmanship doesn't there aren't manuals per se. I mean there are George Daniels, when he wrote his book on watchmaking, was like, look, let me just save you a headache, the same way that Da Vinci wrote a treatise on painting. He's like, look, if you're gonna deal with portraits, let me just give you a few pieces of advice up front, you're still gonna make your own thing. But it's not really, it's it's a philosophical approach to how to do things so that you can answer your own whys. And that I think is where like kind of art in something is like if it's mechanically reproduced. Chevrolet is not making art. They're producing things. This is not that you know, I would eat like a Tesla doesn't strike me as art. I don't know, maybe I haven't thought about it enough. It could be, but it's just like this is a made thing. And for me, I think the kinship between people who make things is nice because we we have similar headaches and we have similar success stories when finally like that that thing you've been agonizing over for for it could be I mean it could be a decade or two where you finally like ah I like I finally figured out how to create something in a way that it does this thing that I was kind of hoping it would do. And that's a that is something I think like art echoing nature. Nature creates things. all the time It in in wonderful like wonderful relationships in an infinite like variety. I mean as an artist you're dealing with like an absolutely minor, nearly non-functional slice of that. And that like I've that point I argued with with teachers in university all the time. I was like, look, no matter what we make, nature's killed us. Yeah. Yeah, like just murdered us. It's like not only is it better design, it's better engineering, it's better growth, it's got better longevity, it deals on like on multiple different time frames, and they all work next to each other. You can't have an art show with two students in the same white box without them trying to kill each other. Like it's not successful at all. Right. You bring up a really good point with with all of this, which is all of these things are defined by like deep and uh I guess long developed ideas in many cases. Uh and I know you have have a you know particular interest in in philosophy and specifically in in zen uh does that impact kind of how you engage with these things on a sort of day-to-day level for sure uh I mean there I I had no I didn't have many templates right I didn't I didn't meet if a functioning artist until I was in university like someone who made their living from it. So the thing I wanted to do, in in many ways, they were like unicorns. Like I had seen them in books, but like I didn't actually meet any of them. Right. Um, and my relationship with religious practice was I mean I grew up in a church and none of it made any sense to me. And you know, I didn't do my confirmation. I when confirmation time came, my mother was like, Well what do you want to do? I was like, well what are the other options? Like I this one doesn't seem very good to me. So she's like, okay, I'll take you to meet like I was raised Presbyterian. She's like, well I'll take you to meet like a Catholic priest and a rabbi. How about that? And I was like, okay, so I went. And at the end of that, I was like, I'm still not buying this. So it it struck me that like people believed in things, but how that all worked, it was it, it didn't make any it didn't really make any sense to me. So I spent ended up spending time more with Zen, I spent you know time with a guru in India to see what to see those other aspects of believing in things to try to come to come to some better understanding of like how do you believe in something and why do you believe in it? And as a life path followed. You have to, I mean, you wake up in the morning, you pick a direction, you decide to do something, you decide to, you know, uh move in any way. Uh uh the aim for me was for it to be fulfilling. And if I didn't if there was no belief really underpinning it, it just seemed kinda random. Yeah, so these these ideas i can obviously guide you in in your life. That's that's obviously a much bigger conversation, but do you do you see these kind of like life defining ideas and these, you know, you say of direction, like having that sense of direction? Is is that something you see playing a a deep role in in both craftsman and and artists' lives? Is that a thing that in in the sort of photography you're doing and your own artistic practice, do do you think that's like a fundamental underpinning? I think that after I've tried a bunch of things. Like I've I've tried making work commercially. I've tried making work like commercially in in an editorial aspect. Um I've done work for governments and private individuals. I I ultimately um finding a finding a way to both produce things in something that doesn't feel like too repetitive or boilerplate is often something that like you have to make a dis as the maker, you have to make a decision. Like I'm gonna do this. And I find that craftsmen often will like pick and choose. They're like, I don't want to do that. Like that yeah, maybe the money's good, but I'm not into it. It's like it's not really it's not very engaging. And I uh so depending on where someone's coming from, like for some people, like safety, security, and stability are really important. So if someone offers you a hundred rotten commissions but it pays well, you go and do that. For me, I was interested in the people who like they had these weird lives where it's like why would you do this? Like the the knife uh the the knife maker in Japan who I first started working with he's in his late 70s. He's kind of stepped back from production to go learn how to make three new types of steel. Like he's like he's he's he's a national treasure. He's been making he comes from a blacksmithing family who makes swords, knives, and scissors, depending on like what the condition of Japan was at the time, whether they were like fighting or doing ikibana. He's like the top. You know, y you sit down and have lunch with him and there's a sign behind him that says he's a national treasure. And he's like, Yeah, I'm gonna step back from this. There are these few other types of like steel me like steel manufacturing. He's like, I want to kind of go learn how to do this. Like he wants to start over again. And I'm like, that is amazing. There's the the the economics of that are absurd, like looked through that lens, it's nuts. Plus he's also gonna put himself a bit like back in the beginner's seat because he's gonna have to go learn from somebody else. Um, but he's interested in creating. Like once that filter is like shifted as to like, well what are you doing here? You trying to like you trying to be a national treasure? He's like, yeah, I did I didn't try to do that. That happened. It wasn't it's not as much it it's not as cool once you sort of get there. I still have to go I mean the Zen proverb where like before enlightenment I carried water. After Enlightenment I carried water. It's like you still just you still carrying the water. So where's the fulfillment? What is the thing that somebody's really driving for? And not knowing how to not knowing how to like do that, not having people around me who I was like, well why do you do that job? Like why do you work on Wall Street? Or like how come you're a doctor? Or like why do you run a landscaping company? Like n I just didn't find answers locally that I thought was uh w they were very interesting. So I ha had to use many airplanes and boats and cars to track down someone would be like, why do you do that? Like it's cool. It's great. You're famous. And so I'm gonna ask you that question then. I think you know that's a perfect place to to kind of end our end our conversation here. Is like, why why do you do what you do? Like what is it that motivates you through all of these different practices? Understanding that creation process to me is is endlessly fascinating and endlessly challenging. It has taught me more about myself and the world around me and gotten me into situations that otherwise I would have never gotten into. And the reward of seeing things at different levels has just made it from like growing up in a black and white television to like living in a hologram and being like, wow, this is so much richer than I had previously expected it to be. And I haven't seen any sign of it quitting. So that to me is that's what's driven it forward. That's perfect. I love that. I feel like I I mean the hard thing here is like I feel like we've just scratched the surface. I feel like there's so many other things we could chat about here, probably for like the next couple of hours. But uh yeah, dude, thank you so much for joining us and it's really great to have you on the show and hopefully the world gets a little less crazy and we can go make some pictures together sometime soon. Thanks, man. Yeah, it was great fun.. I can't wait I uh I can't wait to go outside and stand stand next to another human and and do it's gonna be so good. Hopefully it's not that far off. Well it looks like we're getting there. We're getting there slow slowly but surely. Uh awesome man. Thank you so much. Thanks again. Take care.