Forest Hill is a quiet, mostly residential district in southeast London. But behind one white facade on Dartmouth Road, Mr Jones Watches creates humorous, whimsical timepieces.
Crispin Jones, 52, has said he didn’t intend to start a watch brand. “I thought maybe,” he said, “there could be something interesting to use inexpensive manufacturing, but in a creative way, which was my background, the creative use of technology.” (He holds degrees in sculpture and computer-related design.)
In 2007 he found a factory in Hong Kong that would accept a 500-watch order, so he designed five watches and ordered 100 of each. One, called The Accurate, had the phrase “remember you will die” in lowercase lettering perched on the hour and minute hands.
The watch sold out at 85 pounds (now the equivalent of $112). Mr. Jones recalled, “People kept mailing saying, when will you make more?”
So he did. Now the Forest Hill workshop and a second one in Camberwell, South London, create all the watch parts, except for the cases and movements bought from suppliers, and assemble them. (At Forest Hill, the work is done under the watchful eye of Stanley, Mr. Jones’s friendly 8-year-old dachshund.) There also is a boutique in Covent Garden, which offers free engraving, and an online shop that ships worldwide.
The brand began as a one-man operation, but a few years later Mr. Jones began collaborating with artists such as the Belgian illustrator and author Kristof Devos, who designed the best-selling A Perfectly Useless Afternoon watch (£225). The hour and minute hands are represented by a person floating in a swimming pool and a yellow rubber duck.
“The first time you see it, you just think, wow, it’s some chaotic confusion,” Mr. Jones said. “So you have an image, but then the time-telling function is concealed within that image or integrated in a coherent way.”
Pedro Aguiar Neto, a collector who posts as detroitwatchguy on Instagram, owns four of their designs. “The brand works with very talented artists, all are fun pieces and well made for the price level,” he wrote in an email, “always bring a smile when I look down to see the hours!”
A visitor to the Forest Hill workshop one windy and gray summer day in August prompted Nell Rudd, the brand’s print team manager, to explain the production process. “Artists come up with a design and print techs work out how best to actually manufacture this,” said Ms. Rudd, 39, adding that the team uses a variety of materials and techniques such as airbrushing (with a glitter effect) and gilding.
The company has a permanent collection of about 25 designs, and each year tries to present nine new ones in limited editions. In the past, a limited edition would total 200 copies, but it now makes the number of watches ordered during a specified 12-hour period.
Most of the watches are quartz versions (£225), but some, such as the swimming pool design, are offered as automatic mechanical pieces (£595) or as quartz. The most expensive model is The Indefatigable Sphinx (£2,500), with an automatic movement and a jump hour complication — in which the hour hand jumps to the next index — designed by Johannes Jahnke for the British brand Christopher Ward.
“The lower price point is something that’s always been really important to us,” Mr. Jones said. “We’re really proud that it’s quite democratic. We want the watches to be out in the world and as many people as possible to enjoy them.”
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