Roger W. Smith

Brand history

Founded by Roger W. Smith on the Isle of Man. Protégé and direct heir of George Daniels, the British horologist who developed the co-axial escapement. Production is approximately 10 watches per year, each fully built (including case, dial, hands, and movement) by Smith and his small team in the Ramsey workshop.

Founded by Roger W. Smith (b. 1970, Bolton, England) on the Isle of Man, where he relocated to work alongside George Daniels on the Daniels Millennium series in the late 1990s. Smith was Daniels's only apprentice in the full sense. Daniels approved Smith's second hand-made pocket watch (built using the thirty-two-skill Daniels Method) and the working relationship lasted until Daniels's death in 2011, at which point Smith inherited Daniels's workshop and the responsibility for continuing the English watchmaking tradition Daniels had effectively single-handedly revived. Smith was awarded the OBE in 2018. Annual production is roughly ten watches. The Series 1 (rectangular case, retrograde calendar) and Series 2 (round case, the brand's primary line) are the references in the modern catalog, and Smith builds each watch substantially by hand on the bench. The buyer’s reality: this is the deepest single-watchmaker proposition in the world, and the price reflects it, a Series 2 starts in the high six figures and waitlists are measured in years. If you want to own a watch made almost entirely by one man’s hands using the methodology of George Daniels, there is no substitute. For anyone whose interest is in horology-the-craft rather than horology-the-brand, Roger Smith is the apex.