Clockmakers' Museum London

In January I took a much-needed day off. I had a 'John Day,' to slowly go about whatever I wanted to do instead of work. I'll book a day to do something like this solo in central London once or twice a year. I've been here 8 years and I'm still finding so many things to do. On this 'John Day,' that meant a visit to the Science Museum in Kensington.

On the 2nd floor, tucked away in a corner is the Clockmakers' Museum. I'd suggest going at about a quarter to the hour. Once you've had a read and a look at some of the exhibits, all the clocks will go off. It's fun to hear the chimes going off all over the room, sadly I can't convey that here. Accuracy isn't quite uniform across the centuries that these clocks span, for obvious reasons. It makes for a hilariously mad chorus of chimes and bongs that lasts a good five to ten minutes either side of the hour! You'll think it's stopped, then another starts clanging away!

Up until that point, I really only had 2 references for mechanical clocks in my life. A small pendulum-powered wall clock, like a tiny grandfather clock hanging on the wall when I was a kid. Another was the Jaeger-LeCoultre Atmos, pictured here at their Bond Street boutique. It runs on air, with the winding mechanism powered by the contraction and expansion of a mixture of gas. They can literally run for years without any human intervention. This one in their boutique had been running for decades!

I strapped on a vintage watch (1965) to go looking at some old examples of clock and watchmaking, just felt right!

As you walk in, you're greeted with row after row of grandfather clocks. I learned almost as much about wood carving and varnishing here as I did about clockmaking! These were beautiful antiques. I can't pretend to know much about them other than it was very clear how much work had gone into each and every facet of them.

The clocks then gave way to cases full of pocket watches, with some incredibly special wristwatches also crashing the party. You could spend all day going through each exhibit. I took around 2 hours to go through the whole thing, but the two other people I saw there did pass through pretty quickly. It was a Monday morning at 11:00am, so I pretty much had the place to myself.

Given the location, a large part of the museum was dedicated to the celebration of London-based watchmakers specifically. A brilliantly creative 'Cliff's Notes' on London's contributions to watchmaking could be found on this annotated diagram of a Swatch Sistem 51 movement. Some examples are the balance spring, patented by Dr Robert Hooke in 1664. The sweep seconds hand was invented by George Graham in Fleet Street in the mid-18th century. Thomas Mudge's lever escapement also born in Fleet Street in 1755. The more things change, the more they stay the same!

The Clockmakers' Museum will be hosting a rotating cast of special exhibitions within the museum. Breguet were first up and I didn't want to miss this before they moved on, especially after an incredible visit to the Breguet boutique on Bond Street previously. Now was a chance to see the history of Abraham-Louis Breguet's career through the watches he made. I've become very interested in Breguet recently and this only added fuel to that fire.

Here are some examples of Breguet's hand-built pocketwatches. Breguet was commissioned by the royalty and aristocracy of the 1800s to create some of the most technologically advanced pieces of engineering at the time. Names of clients here include the Princess of Valençay and Tsar Nicolas I of Russia. These watches were lavish displays of wealth and status at the time. They predate the widespread adoption of steam power and the Industrial Revolution. As I've heard it said by others, the runner-up for the world's most impressive technology at the time, was the tall ship. Breguet's watches birthed the self-winding perpetual movement, gong repeater, montre a tact (a series of tactile minute and hour markers you could use to tell the time by touch), and the tourbillon. The art was as beautiful as the science was pioneering. Crisp enamel dials and hand-painted numerals adorn hand-finished gold cases.

Then we move further forward to the 20th century and some of the most important wristwatches in history. Mounted in an unassuming case here is a very special Smiths wristwatch. This is the very watch worn by Sir Edmund Hillary on his successful climb to the summit of Mount Everest in 1953. In today's market the steel, water-resistant sports watch reigns supreme. This watch has contributed a huge amount to that shift and the way watches are still marketed to consumers today.

I've written a blog on George Daniels and Roger Smith for the Watch Collectors' Club, linked here.

I won't go into too much detail here as a result, but here we have some pristine examples of Daniels' co-axial escapement. The 'Sarah Jane' was a watch Daniels made for his daughter. We also have the 'Space Traveller's Watch,' a mechanical marvel I don't quite understand as a muggle. The watch is driven by an independent double-wheel escapement which allows for twin time displays. The crazy part, is it shows both mean solar time, which is the conventional 24-hour day, and sidereal time, measuring using Earth’s rotation relative to fixed stars. In his own words; "When you are on your package tour to Mars you need a watch like this, and when using the telephone for long distance calls you could switch the chronograph into sidereal time to cut your bills by 3.555 minutes per day." Alright then!

The Millennium wristwatch, by George Daniels and Omega. This was made to celebrate the acceptance of the Daniels Co-axial escapement by the Swiss watch industry. As such, the Millennium wristwatches were made using the first Omega movements to contain the escapement. The mechanism was heavily modified by George Daniels and Roger W. Smith (in Daniels' Riversdale studio), and was one of very few pieces made over a three year period.

Here is George Daniels' beater Patek Philippe Nautilus, converted to coaxial by Daniels in 1981 and worn continuously for a decade. No brand x brand really comes close to this for me.

Finally, Daniels apprentice and then business partner, Roger W. Smith. The prototype here and Series 2 are beautiful examples of hand finishing, guilloché and incredible movement design. I've rambled on enough in my blog above, so I won't bore you here. Just take them in!

To close, get yourself to the museum if you're interested at all in the history of watchmaking, particularly as it pertains to London and the UK as a whole. It's a great morning out and it's perfect for a morning coffee on the way out in Kensington. Have a great weekend one and all!