On a hazy morning in mid-June, John Warren, the chief executive and general counsel of Cornell Watch Company in Chicago, took a seat at a coffee shop in the city’s Sherman Oaks neighborhood and placed the brand’s newest timepiece, called the Lozier, on the table.
“Everything on the watch that you see and touch — other than the crystal, which is from Tokyo — we mill on a Kern five-axis CNC machine in Ohio,” Mr. Warren said of the $6,200 model. “Then we hand finish everything. Final assembly occurs in Asheville, N.C., by two certified watchmakers.”
To most people, that description may sound unremarkable. But within the luxury watch industry, Mr. Warren’s comments would likely raise eyebrows.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the United States dominated the global watch trade thanks to its mastery of mass production. But by the time World War II had ended, the domestic watch factories, which had mobilized to join the war effort, could no longer compete with the Swiss. By the 1960s, no one was making an entire watch in the United States.
Until 2023, anyway. That year, J.N. Shapiro, an independent brand in Torrance, Calif., released what it called its “California-made” Resurgence watch. The model, priced at $70,000 to $85,000, featured a guilloché, or engraved, dial, the signature element of the watchmaker Joshua Nathan Shapiro.
Mr. Shapiro’s accomplishment reflected a broad shift in American watchmaking — one that largely began well before President Trump’s recent threats of tariffs on imported goods. The boom in independent watchmaking in the past five years or so has made it easier and more enticing for American brands such as Cornell — a storied pocket watchmaker founded in 1870 and revived in 2023, when Mr. Warren acquired the rights to its name — to produce timepieces in the country.
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The post Watches ‘Made in USA.’ Well, Almost. appeared first on New York Times.
