THE TIME TRAVELLER


George Daniels 1926-2011


LAST OCTOBER GEORGE DANIELS, THE GREATEST WATCHMAKER OF THE MODERN ERA, DIED AGED 85. WE SALUTE THE ENGLISHMAN WHO MADE ONLY 37 TIMEPIECES BUT WHO GAVE THE WORLD THE CO-AXIAL ESCAPEMENT WHICH SHOWED THAT A MECHANICAL WATCH CAN PERFORM AS WELL AS AN QUARTZ ONE.


W


atches fascinated George Daniels for 80 years. As a poor 5- year-old lad in


Edgware, north London, he used a bread knife to prise off the back of a watch. Its workings seemed to him, as he put it, “the centre of the universe”. By the age of 12, he was proficient enough to earn money from neighbours for repairing their watches and clocks. He knew he had entered a world that was a closed mystery to most people. Remembering his school days in pre-World


War II London, during which he was not an outstanding student, he said: “It was a great comfort to me to know that I knew something that no one else knew about.”


After war service during which he earned money fixing his comrades’ timepieces, Daniels


sometimes to restore his historic timepieces.


Having set himself up as a self-employed watch cleaner, repairer and restorer, in the late- 1960s Daniels began to make his first mechanical timepiece. He was only to make 37 in total during his working lifetime of 42 years. In 1969 Sam Clutton reluctantly agreed to buy the first Daniels for £1,900 (about £25,000 in today’s money). Described as “a gold and silver


HIS METHOD WAS TO START MAKING A WATCH “ IN HIS HEAD”, WITHOUT MAKING A DRAWING. “THAT WAY, I CAN CHANGE MY MIND AS OFTEN AS I LIKE.”


got a job as a watch repairer. He studied horology at night school. He acquired old tools and made the ones he couldn’t find. Without a formal apprenticeship, Daniels managed to learn how to make an entire watch himself. In 1960 he met an upper-class friend, Cecil “Sam” Clutton, who introduced Daniels to high-class horology and to high-class vintage motor cars. Both became a passion. He became obsessed by the work of French master watchmaker Abraham Louis Breguet (1747- 1823) and roamed Europe to examine and


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one-minute pivoted-detent chronometer tourbillon”, Daniels’ first creation recently sold at auction in the US for $285,000. In the early 1970s Daniels’ reputation among the horology cognoscenti grew quickly, but as he made every part himself, each timepiece required about 2,500 hours of work. He refused to take orders as he was afraid the customer might default on the deal and refuse to accept the watch. People had to buy what he made, not give him a commission. In the mid-1970s Daniels made a double-


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lever watchthat lost only one second during the 32 days Sam Clutton wore it on a journey to and from Japan. Its performance, Daniels noted with some satisfaction, was better than that of a contemporary quartz watch. He made timepieces that interested him and they fetched prices in excess of £100,000. His method was to start making a watch “in his head”, without making a drawing. “That way, I can change my mind as often as I like,” Daniels said. “One thinks of ways of improving things as one goes along.”


His most celebrated example of “improving things” was his creation of the co-axial escapement. This revolutionised the performance and accuracy of high-quality mechanical watches and is, for some, the most important horological advance for 250 years. His deceptively simple arrangement of cogs and levers virtually eliminated the need for the oil lubrication that was required by the traditional lever escapement in which, as the oil degraded, performance suffered. Despite claiming there was no money in watchmaking, Daniels moved to the Isle of Man for tax reasons in 1982. The marriage that had produced a daughter failed and he later admitted that he had not been a good husband or father. Apart from watchmaking, vintage motor cars were an obsession.


Born on August 19 1926, George Daniels died on October 21 2011.


Photos courtesy of Sotheby’s


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