Roger W. Smith

Roger W. Smith was born in 1970 in Bolton, England. He studied watchmaking at the Manchester School of Watchmaking before becoming captivated by the work of George Daniels — the British watchmaker who had single-handedly revived the practice of making a complete watch by one person, and who had invented the co-axial escapement that Omega would later adopt. Smith wrote to Daniels requesting an apprenticeship, was rejected, persisted, and was eventually accepted. He worked alongside Daniels on the Isle of Man from the mid-1990s until Daniels' death in 2011, by which time he had been formally designated Daniels' successor and the sole inheritor of both his working methods and his philosophical approach to watchmaking.

Smith's atelier on the Isle of Man produces between eight and ten watches per year, almost entirely by hand, using methods that have changed little since the eighteenth century. He cuts his own wheels, makes his own springs, and executes every stage of production and finishing himself, with minimal assistance. His Series watches — a continuing line of time-only and complication pieces — are among the most technically pure objects in contemporary independent watchmaking. Each incorporates the co-axial escapement that Daniels invented and that Smith regards as a genuine improvement on the lever escapement rather than a novelty. Waiting times for a new commission are measured in years.

Smith is one of only four people ever awarded the Freedom of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers by redemption — an honour that reflects both his technical standing and his role in preserving a tradition of English watchmaking that had effectively ceased to exist as a living practice. He has spoken widely about the responsibility he feels toward Daniels' legacy and the discipline of working within a tradition rather than simply referencing it.