I received an e-mail from Daniela, Peter’s wife and partner at the Watch Workshop about 3 weeks prior to his North American portion of the world tour. Initially he had planned on visiting the east coast, part socially and part business, however it quickly snowballed into something bigger and the decision to make it a round the world tour, as plane tickets proved to make sense, was put in motion. At Daniela’s suggesting an evening in LA was hastily arranged with the much-needed help of Thomas Mao. I hadn’t a clue where to meet in LA, who to invite and how to sort out the logistics. I also happened to be in Tucson, AZ at the annual gem & mineral show the 2 days prior, which made for a long week.
I arrived in LA Thursday afternoon, picked up a car at LAX, and spent an enjoyable evening in Pasadena with a couple of old friends in the gem and estate jewelry end of the business catching up. Friday midday I headed south on the 110 freeway from downtown LA after looking at trays of antique jewelry in my friend office, joining the 105 going west to LAX, I arrived a little early to pick up Peter, who flew in from Fort Lauderdale. I managed to find a spot to park without being asked to move on for about 20 minutes, then my luck ran out, so I circled for another 5 minutes! Meanwhile a nightmare was occurring on the 405 North, which I had planned on taking up to the Westside, some idiot had knocked over a crane up in the Valley near Sherman Oaks, which proceeded to topple onto the 405 northbound lanes. Rush hour in LA Friday afternoon meant our leisurely 20 minute drive up the 405 turned into 2 hours 30 minutes on surface streets up through Marina Del Rey and Santa Monica, past my old stomping grounds from my days at the GIA in 1988, whilst we battled everybody trying desperately to exit LA for the weekend. As I hadn’t seen Peter since October, we had plenty to talk about and the time was well spent catching up, gaining greater knowledge of what’s to come from the Watch Workshop and building our relationship further. As much as dealing with the traffic was tedious, I’d have to say it was a very productive couple of hours. I heard about and saw his new 18k hand guilloche dial Piccadilly pieces, which were being shown to the world for the first time on this tour. These are quite spectacular and a great addition to the family of watches from Peter. I was able to secure a couple of pieces for our clients of the initial run which will be about 20 for 2007. He also revealed details of an upcoming project, which I’m not at liberty to reveal, but which will cause great excitement when he goes public with it. A bright future is in store for this superb watchmaker and gentleman. Part of what I find so compelling about his watches is Peter and knowing him. A testament to his design ability and watchmaking capability is his collaboration with both Harry Winston Rare Timepieces and Max Busser. The latter due to the relationship begun while Max ran the watch department of Harry Winston. Harry Winston doesn’t just ask any old watchmaker to work with them on designing and subsequently project managing the Excenter Tourbillon project. As an independent watchmaker, Peter gets to follow his heart finally, and that I think has garnered great appreciation form all corners of the watch world. For collectors and aficionados of superb enamel dialed watches, he fills a void in the market place. How many of the large companies would go to the trouble and probably more importantly, the expense of using genuine enamel dials in their basic watches. Patek reserves them for a couple of their rather expensive executions; the minute repeater gets one for instance. In fact this was the initial reason I contacted Peter and Daniela back in October, 2003 via e-mail from home late one night after floating around on the web reading up on a variety of watch sites. Enamel dials and an English watchmaker, hmmm I need to check this out…the rest they say, is history.
Back to the visit, having checked into the hotel, we did a 10 minute turn around and jumped back in the car to drive down to Santa Monica, where we were meeting a group of southern CA collectors, organized so efficiently by Thomas and his team. Arriving a little late, Peter was quickly whisked away to set up the watches whilst being bombarded with questions about his superb watches. Showing his new dials for the Piccadilly collection, together with a couple of unique pieces, one of which garnered much attention, the Maki-e dialed Eternal-Phoenix. A watch conceived by Peter, who then had his Japanese friend do the Maki-e lacquer dial, which took almost 8 weeks of laborious artistry to execute.
Unfortunately, this piece was already spoken for, however I reserved the next piece to emanate from the Watch Workshop sporting a maki-e dial. No idea what it will depict, but I every confidence in Peter to know that it will be superb. The detail in this dial has to be seen to be truly appreciated. Under 10X magnification all is revealed and “wow, this is killer” was my reaction. I think this group enjoyed seeing it. The other pieces of interest were his hand guilloche dialed gold Piccadilly pieces, together with the Vintage Tourbillon Mark II with it’s enamel dial and hand engraved movement. The hand guilloche dials are made in three parts of 18k gold, and a variety of patterns have been created. My favourite probably was the Clos de Paris, similar surface to the hobnail bezel found on several venerable Patek Philippe watches. Four sided miniature pyramids in red gold cased in white gold.
The evening started as a cocktail gathering and from there we proceeded to sit down for dinner. I was sat on a table with a fascinating group, many of whom I knew in the cyber world of watch websites, but hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting in person. As always at one of these events, the watches being worn were spectacular, an original Freak, a GP triple bridge automatic tourbillon, the Haldimann central Tourbillon, etc…During an interlude between courses, Thomas stood up and made a brief speech about Peter and kindly acknowledged me for coming down with him and partially sponsoring the dinner. Peter did something that I thought truly showed his brilliance, he jumped up, interrupted Thomas in order to convey his gratitude and thanks for Thomas and the thePurists website, without which he would have a much more difficult time getting the word out about his first watches and work in Rolle. It was the sort of acknowledgement that I think rarely is given in today’s fast paced world and one that was genuine.
Peter was than given an opportunity to speak a little about his background and explain where he got his inspiration. He is very straightforward which I think is much appreciated by the collectors, many of whom are used to rather, how shall I put this, “flowery” words that emanate from most of the large corporate watch brands.
This tour was really his pre-Basel showing for collectors, most of whom don’t get to go to Basel for many reasons, usually I suspect trying to keep the taxman/govt at bay and provide for their loved ones in their various fields of endeavour. So for this group to be privy to what the rest of the watch world gets to see in Basel is pretty neat, and another testament to Peter’s commitment to the collector community who supports him.
I’ve been rambling on about him & his watches for a couple of years now, I suspect one of these days he’ll have more people than he knows what to do with asking him for his watches. Those who get his genius and already own one, two, three or more of his watches, yes you know who you are, are ahead of the curve and have the vision and appreciation for Peter’s art. I’m only thrilled I found his watches that late night back in October 2003 whilst prowling the watch websites. Part of the fun of this business is finding these types of rare human beings lurking around, often to be found in or in the vicinity of the AHCI.
Leaving the restaurant, we headed back to the hotel, where many of the collectors regrouped for after dinner beverage, we twisted Peter’s arm to stay for one, and then retired to bed. Saturday morning we were up and at it, headed down to LAX, which took the standard 20 mins, not the almost 2 ½ hours the previous day! Flying into SFO my mother-in-law kindly picked us up and ferried us down to Redwood City around noon.
We checked Peter into a local hotel and then wheeled him down to the store for a couple of hours so that some of our friends & clients could come and see him. The opportunity for them to meet with Peter is one not taken lightly, and we had a steady flow of enthusiasts dropping in. Let’s face it, how often does one get to meet and speak with one of the few great living independent watchmakers who creates superb horological art.
The guilloche dials pieces garnered much attention again.
The Fighting Time made an appearance thanks to its generous owner who happily shared it with his fellow watch nuts!
That same evening, we gathered a few friends and clients, many of whom have already acquired one of Peter’s watches, to an intimate dinner at Bistro Vida in Menlo Park, where our friend Ali treated us to another excellent dinner. We managed to take a couple of group pictures with Peter, of us wearing our Piccadilly watches. Quite a fun picture and a pretty astonishing collection of timepieces. Several unique pieces were being sported by the attendees, with many enthusiasts wearing 2 watches, which to the non-watch lover might be considered odd, eccentric, or just plain mad! Of course, the beauty of one of these get-togethers is the comfort in knowing that one is in good company and the sharing and enthusiasm of watches and knowledge freely flows.
All in all another great gathering of like minded souls, who get what it is about Peter and others of his ilk, who toil away, often times for many years and usually behind the scenes, getting to the point of starting to create their own watch world. As Peter often says, a watchmaker has to create watches, this is his chosen path and we are all the better for having him in our world to whatever degree that might entail.
I appreciate what Peter has gone through to get to where he is today, creating his own world, and I take my hat off to those few who get to that point, it is not an easy path.
I had a meeting with Peter the following morning to go over the new additions and to discuss upcoming plans for the Speake-Marin brand and collectors. We parted ways and he jetted off to Japan to continue west on his world tour.
Warm regards,
Tim
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