The New Breed: How Bremont, Christopher Ward and Farer are Redefining British Watchmaking
The British won the war but lost their watchmaking. Though watchmaking had existed in Switzerland as a cottage industry since the Age of Enlightenment, the Swiss did not truly dominate commercial watchmaking until World War II when the neutral country freely used resources ? from metals to skilled labor to capital ? that other countries fighting the war had strictly rationed. Swiss watch firms took on profitable contracts to build countless mil-spec watches for both the Axis and the Allies, and business was good. The British outsourced most of their watchmaking to the Swiss while producing Spitfire aircraft, bombs, tanks and other cutting-edge military products back home that Winston Churchill famously, and correctly, deemed essential to victory. Seen in this light, the massive reduction in British commercial watchmaking during and after WWII appears more noble sacrifice than miscalculated fumble. The Farer Oxley GMT exhibits the brand’s obsession with dial details and brilliant colors.
The British watch manufacturing that did survive WWII collapsed with a solid thud along with a long list of Swiss, French, and American firms during the Quartz Crisis of the 1970s. Specifically, it was the Smiths instrument division shuttering its Welsh factory in the 1980s that brought an official end to large-scale British watchmaking. Japan?s clever battery-operated devices delivered unprecedented timekeeping accuracy ? if not soul ? to the global market at unbeatable prices, and, i...
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