Skip to content

'Keeper of Time' Panel Discussion and Q&A

Published on Sun, 29 May 2022 12:00:00 +0000

A group of familiar faces chat about the new film, the persistence of timekeeping, and take a handful of great questions.

Synopsis

This is a Q&A panel discussion following the premiere of "Keeper of Time," a documentary about watches, watchmaking, and timekeeping. Moderated by Hodinkee's Jack Forster, the panel features an exceptional lineup including director Michael Solba, Hodinkee founder Ben Clymer, Audemars Piguet's head of complications Michael Friedman, author Gary Shteyngart, horologist William Andrews, William Massena of Massena Lab (executive producer), and antiquarian horologist Brittany Nicole Cox of Memoria Technica.

The discussion explores the profound relationship between mechanical timepieces and human experience. Forster opens by praising the film as the first true cultural document examining what fascinates us about watches and clocks from multiple perspectives. The panelists discuss how collecting evolves over time, with Clymer reflecting on his fifteen-year journey from wanting to understand everything to now cherishing pieces with personal meaning, particularly his grandfather's Omega that he wore when his daughter was born. The conversation touches on deeper themes including how watches connect us across generations, the poignancy of mechanical devices attempting to measure something inherently subjective, and how these objects serve as "stores of time" that link us to their makers and previous owners.

The panel addresses practical concerns, including the underrepresentation of women in horology, with Cox discussing the challenges she's faced while noting increasing female participation in the field. When asked about advice for new collectors amid hype culture, panelists emphasize buying with your heart rather than following trends, finding underappreciated niches, and asking yourself why you want a particular piece. Andrews provides historical perspective on how the field has transformed since the 1980s when it was dying, crediting visionaries like George Daniels who believed mechanical watches would not just survive but flourish. The discussion concludes with appreciation for the documentary's achievement in capturing the intersection of craftsmanship, science, philosophy, and human perception of time.

Transcript

Speaker
Jack Forster This episode of Hodinky Radio is proudly brought to you by Hodinki Insurance. It's the fastest, easiest way to insure the watches you love. Get your quote now at Hodinky.comslash insurance. Hey, it's me, James Stacy, and today we have a special presentation for you featuring the audio from the QA that followed the recent premiere of Keeper of Time, a wonderful documentary about watches, watchmaking, and timekeeping. Moderated by our own Jack Forrester, the panel includes an incredible lineup of guests, including the director of the film, Michael Solba, Hodinki's founder Ben Klymer, recent Hodinky Radio guest and AP's head of complications, Michael Friedman, author Gary Steingart, Horologist William Andrews, William Messina of Messina Lab and executive producer of the film, and Brittany Nicole Cox, who is an antiquarian horologist and the owner of Memoria Technica. If you want to know more about these folks and the film and how you can see it, please visit the show notes for all the required links. The rest I will leave to Jack and the collected panelists. Here is the allure of watchmaking and the notion of time. You know, the uh uh the whole process of making this film um I this is A lot of us uh especially as watching clock collecting interest in watching clocks has grown over the last few years. You know, we've really we've really uh been hungry for and we didn't know what it was, some sort of document that we could show people to say like this is these things are not only worth taking seriously, but what they express about us, what they express about the fusion of craftsmanship and uh science and the human perception of time, it's worth considering. You know, this is something worth taking seriously and also approaching with a a certain sense of humor, a certain lightheartedness that gives us uh insight into how we live our lives and how we can think about the beginning, the middle, and the end of it. And uh one of the th one of the many many I have so many thoughts. One of the one of the many thoughts that I had uh while watching the film was uh you know I thought about the amount of time that it took for you to make it. And I was sort of seeing a um an analogy in you know to uh what Roger Smith went through uh making his first watch uh and showing it to you know Daniels and you know knowing going in that it was uh you know not good enough and then m making it better and making it better and making it better. And this film really strikes me as you know, I there's never really been anything like it um you know in the history of cinema and the in in the history of the intersection between culture and horology. This is really the first true living document that looks at what fascinates us about watches and clocks from a number of different perspectives. And I was wondering if you could just sort of speak a little bit to um how the process of making the film uh affected you, how it affected your perception of time, and how you were able to kind of see all of these different ways in which we experience the physical expression of time and integrate them. Yeah, I mean that was the biggest challenge. I mean again, you know, it started with the watches. And then, you know, you look down at your wrist, or at least I did, and it's the next question is what are they measuring? You know, what is time? And at that point, you know, listen, all of the watchmakers in horology and all that stuff is super interesting, but the film needed that sort of deeper these deeper themes and ideas about how we perceive time, how we experience it, our own you know, th that's what sort of interests me in cinema. So the idea of integrating those deeper themes and meaning and these sort of existential ideas and folding those in with these profiles of these amazing artisans and craftsmen, like that really excited me. And at that point, I that's when I thought like this could be a feature-length film. Because, you know, again, the the watchmakers are super interesting. Um but if it was just a series, I mean they would just be a series of short films um without sort of that Trevor Burrus, Jr. Which, you know, I mean it certainly would be interesting. I mean I'm seeing processes here that uh you know I was not aware before seeing this film the exactly how you know you polish a sink uh so that you have uh you know sort of three-dimensionality in the in how you polish it. One of the many things that struck me was during the section of the film that talks about the kinematics of time perception, you know, there's uh there's a measurable way in which neurologically we see time and we know that we all process it differently. And so there are certain like objectives, objective realities that dictate uh how we perceive time and how our perception of time changes. And yet at the same time, there is such an incredible diversity of ways in which we instantiate time in our own lives. And there's something I want to sort of throw out to the folks in the panel who are collectors, uh, you know, and who are very active in that respect is uh you know, to what extent do you uh to what to what extent does collecting itself, does the uh process of collecting watches and clocks itself act as an expression of the perception of the passage of time? Or does it?
Ben Clymer I'm I'm I'll I'll go first. Well, first of all, I I want to just ask a question here. How many of you had never heard the term clocker before tonight? I mean that's that's amazing. I will be using that in a story very soon. There's no question about that. But you know, to to to your question, Jack, I mean I think I it's it's it's it's hyper relevant. I mean I I think I I when I look at the past fifteen years of my life, which has been hoodinky and and watches and clocks, I look at the the days um when I just wanted to learn and understand and touch and feel everything. And William down on the end there played a big part in that. And he was one of the first guys to take me in when he was working at Anticorum. And then after I started to see and understand everything, I wanted to to own those things. And I would do anything that I can to to to to to purchase those things and and really start to understand them. And now fifteen years later, I'm kind of past that point and I just want to own the things and maintain the things that mean something to me personal. You know, in in that I talk about my my grandfather's Omega, which he gave to me and was kind of the catalyst for all this in my life. I said, you know, maybe someday I'll have a child and maybe someday I'll wear Late last year I had that child, and lo and behold, that watch was on my wrist when when she was born. And I think that is kind of a perfect analogy for for for my life. And I think many of our lives as a collector, and I'm looking at at William down on on the other end here, as as really representative of what all this means to all of us. And I think the things are great. And I think what was so amazing about this film is that we didn't talk about ROI. We didn't talk about how much the Daytona is selling for. In fact I don't even think we heard the word Rolex once in the film, which is kind of remarkable. We heard it once. We heard it once. Okay. From Mr. Steingard. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. But it it was really, you know, I as a collector, it really, you know, you evolve so much. And I think we all evolve as people, obviously. And it it it really resonates. The this film really resonated to me and made me think about how much I've grown as an individual and certainly as a collector over time.
Jack Forster Yeah, it's uh you you sort of uh you start out with uh sort of a focused, more or less focused if you're an actual collector process of uh of acquisition and the acquisition itself and the evolution of uh of how you acquire things is is the is the meaningfulness of the activity. But then it sort of starts to become something else. Willi
William Massena am? I I have a different process than Ben. I think you know when when you go jump or if you start a soccer game, you have people they cross or you have people that make a little prayer. Every time I buy a watch, I tell myself this quote from Oscar Wilde, and it's time is a waste of money. And and that's basically where I stay at. I pay my watch and I just think about that. Sorry,
Jack Forster Ben this is some this is probably a question that's going to uh resonate resonate. See what I did there? Um this is a question that might resonate uh perhaps a little bit more with some members of the panel than others. But um you know, uh uh uh Will, for instance, you know, I was thinking about your work with sundials, and they're extraordinarily beautiful, they're aesthetically extraordinarily beautiful. And they are by their very nature uh conceptually and physically integrated with the larger universe. And like you know, all watches and clocks are to a certain degree, but it's very explicit in your work. And um while I was watching the section of the film that you're in, I was thinking about the fact that, you know, presumably all of these devices measure the same thing, whether it's, you know, uh a smartphone or an Apple Watch, uh Philippe Dufour Simplicity or one of your sundials. And the the work that you do involves shining a light to make a obvious pun on um the different ways in which it's possible to experience the passage of time in its most fundamental way. That's really
William Andrews what drew me to it. If a sundial stops working, you've got more to worry about than the time. Yeah. You may have bigger problems. And if you set it up correctly, it will always keep time. And I've had the good fortune during my life working with some of the greatest collections in the world and training with exceptional people too. And I thought it would be great to create a device with no moving parts, because I know the difficulties of that and how they need cleaning and everything else like that. It actually, the idea for this particular dial came to me around 1978 or so, when I had just arrived in this country, and I met a cartographer, a British cartographer who was living out in Chicago, and he showed me this map from 1610. And I was spellbound by it, but I wasn't able to um do anything about it at the time. Uh but uh after I was doing an exhibition at the Frick Collection in 2001 and 9-11 occurred then. And I realized the whole museum world was changing. And so I thought to myself I've got to do something other than advise museums and private collectors. And so I decided to go back and start working on the other side. Sort of evolved
Jack Forster . You said that one of the things that appeals to you about sundials is that you have this wonderful mechanism that's actually not a mechanism, it has no moving parts. And I guess this next one is for uh Michael and Britney because you both work in worlds that involve an awful lot of moving parts. And you know, Brittany, one of the things that's always uh fascinated me about your work is um you are taking things that have lost their ability to reflect themselves in our own minds and you're returning that ability to them. That's kind of the way I've always you know sort of phrased itself you know to me. And I was wondering if you just sort of talk about that a little bit and talk about um how that kind of what opportunities that gives you to reflect on how we perceive the passage of time as we per
Brittany Nicole Cox ceive the evolution of movement in these automata. Well the name of my business, Memoria Technica, actually means a technical device that assists the memory. So that's very on point. I think the things that I work on mostly the way that they manifest uh when they do work that I'm kind of always competing with is someone's memory of the thing when it worked. So, you know, I'll get maybe an antique music box that was given to someone as a wedding gift and they've played it many, many, many years and they're used to maybe it being a little slower than what it's like once I've you know serviced it and everything's lubricated, things are fixed, they're working. It actually runs faster than it did in their memory. So there's almost this competition with this memory of an object and the nostalgia that it brings to a person that is manifested in what I do
Jack Forster .: You know, Michael, with uh with what Oudmar Piguet does and you know your interest in watches and watchmaking is uh obviously you know quite far ranging and not for nothing were you introduced as a historian in this uh in in this film. But the uh the complexity of the mechanisms that you have sort of built your life around and built your life around understanding, um it represents a very widely varied experience. You can create very varied experiences of the passage of time Maybe speak to that a little bit. Before we even get to Odomar P Gay in terms of those layers, I mean I do want to say something by the way. Uh Will Andrews, who wrote the the literally wrote the book on longitude, he he taught me how to read a sundial at a at a very that was in my early twenties. He consulted me on exhibitions early on in my career and it's really incredible to be here here with all of you guys today. But in particular it's not every day you get to sit next to uh somebody who really helped shape a career. So Will, thank you tremendously. I couldn't say anything without uh by the way, so those of you who know me and know how far out I can go, that's that's where it comes from. Like it's but back to your question, Jack. Um yeah, in terms of layers of complic of complications and the depth that you can go, that's that's precisely what happens when you get into this world of virology, whether it's through automata, whether it's through collecting. Um, you you start to dive in and see different levels and different levels of ways that time can be expressed through craft and ways that we perceive it as individuals. And complications are just different windows into that experience of what time is. A perpetual calendar is a very, very direct metaphorical link to astronomy itself. Chiming watches, as we discovered in the film, are a much more ancient relationship in that sense. Just the whole notion of what you were discussing, of the interaction And when we look at watches, we're looking at the men and women who created them and who service them. We're looking at objects of permanence in this era of obsolescence as we're moving deeper and deeper into this digital age. So these objects are also changing in culture in terms of how we see them. Because 50 years ago, watches were not so distinguished from other aspects of culture. Today they're getting further and further away from the majority of what we see and experience and consume. So that's where the beauty of complications comes in, because it really is that diving in as deep as possible into that universe of of how how how wild can we go, how far can we go? But most importantly through the lens of Odomar PG, how do we keep adding new chapters for the future? Because if we're only creating for the past, we're not going to be remembered in the future. So we're really trying to add chapters to this now. So in a hundred years, these watches and clocks that are being made today are going to be part of the exhibitions of museums as they are now. Aaron Powell You know, Michael, um something that just occurred to me while listening to you was that um time is passing while a minute repeater is chiming, so by the time it gets to the end of its strike, it's already inaccurate. This is true. Which that's why we haven't made the second repeater yet. Yeah, I well I mean, you know, to me that's the that's one of the beautiful, kind of poignant things about watches, right? I mean, uh, you know, a per you can you can write down the equations for a theoretically perfect mechanical oscillator quite easily. The, you know, the math is not is not complicated at all. And every watch is in a sense an attempt to get as close as it possibly can to a destination that it can never actually reach. Um and there's a there's a a weird kind of there's there's a a s a little bit of poignancy there, I think, but also something really beautiful. I think you just answered your own. I think I don't want to add to that, Jack. I think we've got to m Well i I mean you know one of the things that I that I that I think about Gary whenever I think about you what you do for a living, which I which despite what you say is is actually work. Um Type a type of uh a book is a book is a brick of time in a sense, and it's something that you can go back to and r you can re-experience uh your psychological passage through that block of time over and over and over again. And there's always something different about how you experience I mean this is the pleasure of rereading books, right? I mean uh you you you go back for the pleasure of what you already know, but you also get the pleasure of experiencing it in a new way every time you do it.
William Andrews Yeah, and I think part uh one thing that I think unites books and and uh and watches and clocks is that they are kind of a store of time. I wrote my memoir when I was thirty-nine and everyone kept saying, Well, what the hell you are doing? You know, uh live a little, you know. Uh but my feeling was, first of all, I smoked a lot of potted when I was younger and the memory wasn't doing so well. But my feeling was I needed to to have it there for my son, who was just born when I was writing that. I needed there to be a record. I think every book I write is a record. You know, and I think of of watches, we were talking about how uh each watch signifies something. Uh recently I went through a horrific medical problem that lasted about a year. And there was one watch that I kept using, strangely enough, a a submariner, uh with the bezel, and I needed to time some horrific procedures with it. And I thought, when I recover, I will definitely get rid of this watch. You know, because it's associated with so much pain. But when it was over, I realized I can't get rid of it just as much as I can't get rid of, you know, my anxiety and bipolar and all the other crap I have, you know. It doesn't help that I have two psychiatrists and they're both watch collectors, which is so New York, you know. And they're always goading me to buy more and more. I just got this watch because this he wouldn't shut up this guy. He said you're not gonna heal until you get a Grand Seiko SBGW033. Yeah. Ten years ago, I thought books were gonna go out of fashion completely. Everybody was just gonna be reading on their Kindle. Books, LPs, there's so many things. I mean, you mentioned nostalgia, and there's a kind of good or and a bad nostalgia. I think there's a lot of really good nostalgia happening. Uh and what would the one of the reasons I got into watches honestly is uh social media was was destroying my life. Uh please follow me at Twitter, uh at Steingart. But but still destroying my life and watching looking at a at a at the sweep of a second's hand calms me down so much, gives me such a sense of balance and proportion. And I think it's no coincidence that in the last six years since I've been in love with watches, all the friends that used to make fun of me and say, What are you gonna do? Stamp collecting next, you know? They're all now calling me like, you know, the new tutor Blackbait Pro is it too thick at 14.1, you know. So we're all changing. Yeah
Jack Forster , that's uh the worm turns, doesn't it? Yeah. Okay, it's time for our ad break. And anyone who has ever bought themselves a nice watch and then tried to add it to an insurance policy will know just how big a hassle it can be to get your watch insured. You need receipts, an appraisal, a pile of photos, and lots of patience just to get your watch properly protected. Frankly, it sucks, so we decided to make something better. Hodinky Insurance is the fastest, easiest way to insure the watches you love. Get your quote now at hodinky.com/slash insurance
William Massena . There is a book uh that a lot of us have read. It's uh uh Harry Potter, and in Harry Potter you have the Ocks, and the first time I read that book and it talked about the Ocrax, I thought it was kind of like an evil watch. And that a good watch could be an Oculus where the watchmaker has put his soul in the object, and then the first owner affects it, and all the next owners will affect it in certain ways.
Jack Forster Yeah, I mean I I completely agree. One of the I think one of the very first experiences I had with the watches was I I bought a broken flea watch uh flea watch a broken watch at a flea market pocket watch you know back when dinosaurs ruled the earth and uh it took me about six months to take it apart, clean it, put you know, put it back together, oil it, and get it running again. But uh, you know it, was a hundred and twenty five-year-old Wolfham, I think I paid ten bucks for it. My hair stood on end when it started ticking, you know, and I realized that one of the things that these things do is they connect us to the people who made them and the other people who experienced them. And uh you can almost feel if this doesn't sound too weird, you can almost feel friendly spirits gathering around every time you uh every time you put on a watch um or you know see see an amazing clock or you know look at a look at a beautiful I mean, um it's they're time machines, but they're also portals that connect us to everyone else who experienced them and everyone who made them. Aaron Powell You're right about that. I mean, before Will was making sundials, he he worked on a lot of pretty serious clocks, just that hadn't been established yet. And one thing when we're looking at clocks and we're removing the hoods and you're going to the back of the clocks is you often will see marks of the times that it was restored. And what's fascinating is we have we have one of our producers, John Reardon here. Both he and I came up together at the Willerhouse and Clock Museum, and these are multi-generational clockmakers. And you see actually the passage of time through the genealogy of these family members producing clock You see the names of their children and their nephews and the following generation scratched onto the back. And that that just echoes your sentiment right there. And that's when you're looking at them hundreds of years later, it's it there's a little bit of the ghost in the machine for sure. Yeah, absolutely. Michael, to uh to a point you made earlier, it's uh uh uh an incredible privilege to be up here uh with some of the finest creative and technical minds in watch and clock making and also some of the most uh uh experienced collectors, people who really have moved through the world of watches and clocks and related mechanisms incredibly thoughtfully. And um as time is passing, I want to sort of make sure we give an opportunity to folks in the audience who would like to uh would like to ask questions because uh this is a chance that comes along uh I I mean this is the first this is the first time for me um just a really phenomenal collection of people. Um so uh anyone in the audience uh have a question they would like to ask? Or a comment or th
William Andrews ought? Yes. I I just wanted to say when I read that book, Longitude, um I was already collecting a lot of different things, but but watches them on. And I remember thinking to myself, here's a guy who spent his entire life and he made like six watches or six clocks. And I thought to myself, well, there's so many different ways of looking at it. You can look at it. There's the automatic m things that were made in Europe and then there was there were wars where people got wristwatched that was a big deal. There were kings and all these other things. And I think that it's interesting that you went in the direction of the philosophical. I wanted to know a little bit more about how you decided, I mean you said you could have made a six-hour movie, of course, but how you decided to take it into the technical and the philosophical rather than the historical or the social, which is a whole nother aspect I think that we're all interested in. Thank you.
Jack Forster Yeah, I mean like I said, it you know it certainly did start with the watches and you know the next question is again, what were these measuring? And I think just for me personally it's just what I'm interested in, you know. I'm interested, like I said, more of these bigger ideas about um, you know, certainly what how time,
Ben Clymer how we experience time. You know, I think it's interesting that these, like um Jack had touched on, these objects that are measuring time are measuring something that
Jack Forster they're making it sort of objective. They're spirit they're splintered And so that is objective in a sense, but the way we experience time is completely subjective. And I thought, you know, I just think that the juxtaposition of that is really interesting. Yeah. Uh some someone else, uh if you wanna know about the relationship between cartographic projections and sundials? Now's your chance?
Unknown Um this question is uh actually I think for Brittany first, and then if other people want to comment, that's great too. But I just was really struck by how few women seem to be a part of this world, and I was wondering if you're comfortable talking about it, what that was like for you as you came into this profession, and how you have found that to be um and then also from the male perspective, what that's like to be in such a seemingly male world. Thank you
Brittany Nicole Cox . Well, it doesn't not have challenges as you might expect. I think I'm happy to say more and more women are getting into this field. So uh I think just basically trying to do everything as well or better than male counterparts because people haven't always taken me seriously. I think I I used to dress very, very feminine and took kind of a turn into wearing a lot of workshop clothes so that people might take me more seriously when they came into my workshop. And now I think I've just skewed back into trying to just be myself. And if I want to wear mascara, I can. You know, and it's um it's funny. I actually forgot to wear my wristwatch today. Faux pas at this I know. So I'm just I'm on daisy time. I decided that's what I'm going to go on. But yeah, it's it's definitely had its challenges. And one reason I wanted to start my own practice was so that I could isolate myself and really if I failed it would be because of my own failings and not because I'm a woman in what has been a male dominated field. But I am like I said very happy to say to s that there are many women entering this field. There are a lot of women watchmakers and clockmakers, and it's just it's really inspiring and I'm really excited to see where this field opens up and what other women will make. I'd love to see uh more women making watches and things of that nature
William Massena . I I can tell you what there's not a lot of women that watch collector uh in In case you haven't noticed, uh watches are shiny objects and they're made for men child. And that's basically why I think women don't need those little shiny objects
William Andrews . to this that I I mean I've always had mostly women friends, but through watches I've made some man friends. And I think it's because I you know like William and and Ben and Jack and everyone, you know, I I've never had male points of sort of contact with things that men supposedly like. I don't like sports that much. I don't own a hedge fund. You know, so but with watches, I feel that a lot of yeah, I feel that a lot of men that I meet, this is the old this is their best way of communicating because they don't know how to communicate about, you know, other things, feelings, etc. And so reference numbers and MSRPs began to stand in for that. And they really do form a kind of deep fellowship, you know, that I can't complain about and that I sometimes enjoy. I think more and more women are are involved. The curator at Greenwich now is uh is a woman and with a worshipful company of plotmakers collection. She's been appointed. Women have been were involved back in the 19th century on fine piecework. You don't know them. There are very few who were actually listed, but they were making parts and these were extremely valuable to the trade. So in fact women and children were engaged for certain uh certain parts
Jack Forster . Absolutely. And Jack, just one I want to add a little bit. The most important designer uh other than Gerald Gent is Jacqueline Dimier, his successor. Um my colleague Ginny is here, the CEO of of the AP Americas, as well as is our marketing director, Kathleen. In some of the companies, things have moved fast and and it's also it's been rooted there for a long time. And I do want to echo what everyone said here though. There there are still a lot of room to grow in that sense, and there still can be more women as as as well as more people, just a greater scope of people who can be brought into this field and in this business. We had uh several hands up um and I want to give uh a chance for as many people
Unknown as possible to ask questions. Hi. Uh first of all terrific film, loved it. I have a question and and perhaps any of you can address it as a young baby collector, if you will, female, of course, but especially Michael Friedman perhaps can address this. So we we're in a time where there seems to be so much hype culture happening around watches. And as somebody or as as you know, as a group of people who are collectors and are serious about this, would what would you recommend in terms of going about it now as a as a person who is younger and who's just perhaps in the earlier stages of your collection, wanting to kind of collect things that will stand the test of time. No pun intended. So
Jack Forster uh that's a that's a great question. Thank you for that. I'll I'll uh please other people jump in as well. I think one great place to approach it as well is to is to look just also beyond the immediate subject of what's popular, what people are looking for. Again, even with Otomar Piggy, people a lot talk a lot about the Royal Oak, but there's there's so much more and so much more history and and diversity and designs and forms and shapes that predated as well as that exist today. When you jump around to brands. Eyver brand has has models that are are really sought after and those where there's a lot of opportunity. Ben and I were talking about this yesterday. I'm I love many brands and when I was a young collector I was really uh obsessed with omega dynamics and these are beautiful well made watches that are still incredibly acquirable today. Uh you can even even in in in Patek Valip, vintage Patek Valip, there are some models that are at 20 year lows today. It's not all gone in one direction. It's really about what what it is you're looking for, what's what the what's the range you want to acquire in, and then diving a little bit deeper and looking well beyond the trends. I'm I'm pretty, I'm not on Instagram, I don't look at secondhand values. I really just try to to look with my heart and and and my eyes and then to share with other people what drives them towards something. What what do you love about that? That's something that that we see in other fields a lot where people are are asking, hey, why do you love that object instead of I like this, why do you like that? I'm really I'm interested in the more optimistic side of all of this and asking people why they're driven towards a certain object. Not just watches, but anything. So, you know, inquire a little bit, see what's around, see where there's gaps in the market. Um, you have great resources to look into that, and definitely don't buy into what what you produceive as hype. Put it away and just, you know,
Ben Clymer really look with your heart. Yeah. And if if I could jump in on that one, I mean me being me, I get approached by people of of some repute every day saying, hey, can you help me get a 5711 or a Daytona, et cetera? You know, the question I often ask them is just why do you want that watch? You know, and and sometimes there's a really great answer. Maybe it is my grandfather had that watch and he was my hero. I mean that that's my story, obviously. And that that totally connects with me and that that makes a lot of sense and I would happily help those folks. A lot of times they don't really have an answer. Or the answer is, oh, my friend said it's impossible to get or it trades for five X retail, et cetera. And so I think, you know, asking yourself why you want something, I think, is is you know kind of step one. And then I think as as Michael said, finding a niche that is really underdeveloped or underappreciated, I th I think is really really fun. And one of the videos that we did earliest on in Hodinki, actually even before we did the video on on Will Andrews, which is I think approaching 10 years old at this point. Uh we did a video on a guy named uh Gene Stone who collected purse watches. Oh yeah. You know, and they they really look like little belt buckles. And this guy had an amazing collection of these things. I mean hundreds of them. And you know, it's just it's what he loved. And they were, you know, they were they were kind of expensive, but not crazy expensive. And he amassed a collection of, I don't know, probably 150, 200 of them. Uh and he is the purse watch guy and has been historically. We have a mutual friend Jason Singer who was a bubble back guy, um, and then moved on to other things. And I think it's it's really fun when you become the expert in something particular, if that's helpful.
William Massena I'll I'll add to what Ben just said. I I just finished a book uh from somebody who was in the movie um Max Boosser, I just finished his catalogue resonée. And uh we went over he in 15 years, he did 180 different references, 18 calibers, which is an enormous amount of watches. And at the end, I was counting the watches he made and the early stuff. We made limited edition of 60 pieces, 70 pieces. When you count the watches, he only made 11, 10. And I was telling I thought you were so loud on those. And he was like, no, I just made 11 because I had 11 people that wanted the watch. And those watches now are worth, you know, a fortune. So don't go with the popular stuff. Go with what you like and give yourself a break and your taste that you know be confident in what you're doing regardless of your experience in watchmaking or as a watch collector okay uh thank you. Thank you all for your
Jack Forster contributions to this film. It was great. Um I sitting in this room with all these people that recognize from various different outlets and and and aspects of this hobby, I'm kind of building off the last question, w what in your opinion, or this for the whole panel, what can we do as a community or or group or or mass of collectors in this room to preserve and build on on on uh what you've captured in the film, the hobby, collecting, watchmaking, horology. What what do we do for the future as a group
William Andrews ? I'll have a shot at this one. When I started out, I had the good fortune to to work with George Daniels for a couple of years and um also with a clockmaker called Martin Burgess. And the whole field of horology was dying. And who would want to go into horology? There was no career. You could become a watch repair man, but it wasn't terribly exciting. Wristwatches weren't visible in auctions until the late eighties. So we lived in a very different world then. George Daniels had this idea that the the mechanical watch would survive, that it was not only would it survive, but it would flourish. And he had a vision way back then that no one else had at the time. And Martin Burgess, the great clockmaker who makes sculptural clocks, he had the same vision about clocks, that clocks were like sculpture. You look at the mechanism inside, it's so wonderful, you're drawn into it. People made a big fuss about the case, but when you take the mechanism out of the case, there's a wonderful work of art in there. And and a timekeeping device is an extraordinary instrument because it's got to look beautiful. It's got to be made superbly. And it's got to keep time. What what is good timekeeping? If you make a piece and you get 99% in the major universities, you would graduate with the highest honors. If you were a clockmaker or watchmaker, you'd fail instantly, because one percent variation in the course of a day is about 15 minutes. John Harrison, with his timekeeper for finding longitude at sea, had to make his timekeeper keep time to within 99.99%. And today, when you look at the some of these great timekeepers, it people overlook the fact that they're keeping extraordinary time. I mean, we we have Apple Watches, we have uh iPhones and things like that that that keep perfect time and we rely on them. But you think of a mechanical device doing it, you know, that's 700 years of development. And out of that has come so many other things. I I won't go on about it, but a mechanical watch is an absolute masterpiece
Unknown . Jack, we're gonna hop up here. Thank you very much, Mr. Friedman, for allowing me to use your mic. Um I wanted to go back a little bit. When you were speaking of women in whistraches, now I know the historian here, he could better answer this, is that the first wristwatches were made for women. So it's kind of like a you know, it's funny how you say, you know, the man, child, you know, the men, we kinda take this over and we love it. And um segueing back to the young lady who was a new collector and she wanted to just kind of ask some questions. I think that's great. One is her just being a woman and wanting to collect watches. And the fact that wristwatches started with women, because for men it was pocket watches. And then segueing into what she wanted to know about how to think of it. And you were speaking of kind of fall into it, just kind of make it your own, um, as you were saying. And it brought me back to uh one of my first mechanical pieces, one that you also noticed and your turbulence is amazing, Mr. Friedman. Not mine, it's the company's listen I know how it goes. But it brought me back into that mindset of you know everyone saying it's a stainless steel, you know, um years back, you know, when I purchased it for my twenty-fifth um birthday, well really 26th because i look at time differently as we spoke on it so my twenty fifth birthday is when i turned 26 that's how i look at it um you know i've lived 25 years and i get to 26 and everything about you know the way how I think and certain things falls into it. Like I know my some of my friends, they say that I'm crazy in the essence because I completely designed and built my whole kitchen on the basis of the design of the royal oak. It's kind of weird, just between just the the love from the tapestry dial, um the bevels and and so forth. I used all these things. Give your
William Massena address at the door, they'll come film you next week
Unknown . He he did not, but it's actually just great that it kind of fell into play and you know she brought this up and then what she said was like oh with all the hype and everything like that what is it how should she think of it and it's like no just kind of just fall into it what you like you know, and for me, looking into this piece, it allows me to see so much. And just the the bevels and the way how the light hits. You know, a lot of people didn't even know. Most of my friends, when I first purchased it way back, they had no idea what it was. And I'm like, don't worry about it. And looking at it now, as I've completed, you know, that kitchen and the design and everything, I'm not sure if everyone understands it. But one of the things that I took from what Automar Pague said, you know, well, the brand stated this, he said, before you can break the rules, you must master it. And the first time, I know that that came from a philosopher way back in history, but I got it from Artemar's Paget. That's where I got that from. And I looked at it that way. So everything in reference to way how I do designs and when I build things, I look at that and I use that. So you know, I think that was just something good for the young lady to hear and just use that to fall into, you know, her watch collecting um you know jour
William Massena ney uh uh uh just to to be precise because history is kind of my my thing. The first person to have a wristwatch, we think, was Pauline Bonaparte, Napoleon's sister, who ordered a brigade to make them to make her a wristwatch. And she was kind of the first person and yes, she was a wom I
Unknown have a practical question. I have exactly one antique pocket watch that was my father's and if you know nothing except that Michael
Brittany Nicole Cox interviewed my husband for the film, Adrienne Bajan, on the passage of time. Where do you go to have your watch repaired? I mean if you know nothing, what do you do
Jack Forster ? I know a good guy in New York. I'll give him I'll give him your name. I mean, I'm sorry, would you seriously? Thank you very much. And the mic goes. Thank you so much. I was told not to do this, but I'm gonna try to not have a Jennifer Lawrence moment. There we go. Well we're uh we're rather uh not unexpectedly coming up on time, but uh uh I just wanna thank you all for participating uh uh in this project. Thank you. Thanks for moderating. Thank you to all of you. Thank you. And I I want to thank uh on behalf of uh everyone who loves watches and everyone who loves just sort of approaching life thoughtfully. Michael, I want to thank you for making this film man. Yes. Thank you so much for saying so. I really appreciate it
Ben Clymer . Thank you.