George Daniels Un Maître Horloger et son Art

George Daniels, the rise of a street child who has become the greatest watchmaker of our time Like George Dickens, George Daniels, born in 1926 in a poor neighborhood in northern London, has experienced torment and deprivation since his death. younger age. With his eleven brothers and sisters, he lived in profound material and emotional misery. At the age of five, he uncovered the bottom of a cheap pocket watch to scrutinize his inner life. This experience was at the origin of an exacerbated passion for watchmaking that will not leave him and will forge his destiny. As often in the large and poor families of the time, his parents send him to work, at the age of fourteen, as a worker in a mattress factory that he strives to leave to find a job with a watchmaker. He then attended evening classes in Clerkenwell and established himself as a watch repairer. He worked regularly sixteen hours a day. In this fascinating book, Michael Clerizo recounts the major stages of George Daniels' life and career. He explains how he became an antique watch restorer for Sotheby's and wrote a reference book about his model, Abraham-Louis Breguet. Not content to follow the footsteps of his idol, George Daniels was driven by the ambition to surpass him. He then built his own watches and invented a revolutionary mechanism: the first new escapement to see the light since the mid-eighteenth century. He incorporated his invention into his watches and began to convince the industry of its benefits at a time when quartz seemed to be the death knell of the traditional art of watchmaking. The same tenacity that had served him to overcome the innumerable obstacles that stood in the way of a kid with cockney accent in the mid-1930s, allowed him to achieve his goal. Today, most Omega watches feature the coaxial escapement invented by George Daniels. In a career that spanned six decades, he built only 25 watches, all unique pieces. Michael Clerizo knew George Daniels well and he met with him many times at his Isle of Man residence. The transcript of these conversations accurately reflects the thought and principles of a man who equaled his historical model by his own genius. Abundantly illustrated with color photographs of his timepieces as well as many unpublished archival material, the thrilling story of Michael Clerizo opens fascinating insights into the life, personality and work of an absolute master. art, a man proudly claiming his self-taught status.