How a Scottish watchmaker has turned back time to create a masterpiece

But at the city’s high-end watchmaker anOrdain, the time-honoured process of creating enamel dials for its mechanical watches requires not only the fine precision of its craftspeople but significant patience from its customers.

Global demand for its grand feu enamel dials - made using multiple layers of powdered glass over a cooper disc, fired in a kiln at 800˚c and emerging with mesmerising, brilliant colour – is running so high, that those seeking its finest models must put time on hold while they wait, and wait, and wait a bit more.

One of anOrdain's watchmakers puts final touches to a timepiece (Image: Contributed)

For as it stands with just a few dozen watches leaving the workshops every month, the waiting list for customers seeking to strap an anOrdain enamel-dial watch on their wrist is now stretching to 2029.

Orders for the understated watches have soared as news has spread around the world of the Scottish brand’s highly-skilled use of enamel to create its lustrous and distinctive watch faces.

Once a staple of watchmaking, enamel dials are incredibly tricky to master, time-consuming to make and come with high risk of failure.

As a result, the technique was overtaken by other cheaper materials, and the art of making enamel watch dials vanished for all but a select and very expensive foreign brands.

While the skill of watch and clockmaking in Scotland, once a thriving centre of horology innovation and design, faded away.

AnOrdain enamel watch dials (Image: Contributed)

Now having been revived in Scotland by anOrdain, demand is at such a high level that customers placing an order today face a five year wait to get their hands on one of the prized watches.

Company founder Lewis Heath says the extraordinarily long waiting list began to grow during the pandemic as watch enthusiasts spent time researching the traditions of watchmaking and seeking out brands that sought to keep alive old-fashioned skills and dying crafts.

For some, there is a particular lure in avoiding some of the glossy big-name brands for niche manufacturers who nurture old skills and whose watches weave a story of heritage, design and innovation.

Others just want to get hands on an enamel dial watch for a few thousand pounds – as opposed to the tens of thousands it would cost for a big brand version.

It’s led to the tiny Glasgow watch company racing against the clock to train a new generation of expert enamellers and watchmakers who can help them meet soaring demand.

That move that has helped to drag the traditional craft of watch face enamelling from being branded ‘extinct’ in the UK by the Heritage Craft Association to being placed initially on its red ‘at risk’ list and eventually being removed entirely.

While looking ahead, the Glasgow business intends to launch a dial enamelling school, where it can train even more in the intricate art of making enamel watch dials.

The firm's success has sparked interest in the small group of other specialist Scottish watch brands that have sprung up in recent years including Glasgow-based Paulin, which now comes under the anOrdain umbrella. 

All of which has raised hopes Scotland might again become a centre of watchmaking excellence, competing with some of the world’s most recognised producers of high-quality timepieces.

Lewis, who combines running the business with his croft on the Black Isle, says the lengthy waiting list does not appear to put off potential customers, many of whom are creatives from America’s Silicon Valley and seem content to patiently wait years for their very own anOrdain watch.

“When Covid hit, it seemed people had a bit more money and time on their hands, they started to research things like watches and they got to know about us,” he adds.

“We went from it taking about eight weeks to make a watch after it was ordered, to there being this enormous demand and us struggling to supply it.

Tools used by anOrdain's enamel artists (Image: Contributed)

“We put a waiting list in place. We found people were joining it, paying a deposit and seemed fine to wait.

“At first, I thought people might wait around a year,” he adds. “Then we had to explain it would be three years.

“And now it’s five years.”

With demand for anOrdain watches outstripping the speed at which his team can create them, not unlike luxury brands such as Hermes they tend to fetch more on the second-hand market than their retail price.

“I think that gives people security, and they don’t mind putting down their deposit and waiting because they know they are not going to lose out,” he adds.

Watchmaking and enamel-dial watches were once commonplace in workshops across the country, where craftsmen passed down their expertise from tradesman to apprentice.

When architecture graduate Lewis began to explore the idea of launching a watch brand in 2014, the long-lost skill of creating enamel dials and reviving Scotland’s once world class skill of producing every element of a watch from strap to movement, appealed to his creative streak.

Enamel dials are coveted by wristwatch enthusiasts (Image: Contributed)

Making a high-quality watch movement from scratch brings particular challenges, but the idea of creating enamel dials emerged after Lewis saw a brilliantly coloured enamel commemorative poppy created by a Birmingham coin minting company.

“Enamelling is an art, all watches were made using enamel before the 1920s, the skill now only remains in high end brands and isn’t viable to do with ordinary watches,” he adds.

“This interested me.”

Aware that enamelling featured in jewellery making, he advertised at Glasgow School of Art to see if anyone was interested in making enamel watch dials.

It attracted one applicant, who then spent three years trying to figure out how to transfer the skill to watch dials.

anOrdain's enamel dial watches are known for their vibrant colours (Image: Contributed)

“Dial enamelling is similar to jewellery enamelling but with aerospace level tolerances and no room for any flaws,” adds Lewis.

“Even in the Swiss industry there are only a handful of enamellers and one producer supplies most of the luxury brands.

“Nobody in the UK could do it, and nobody anywhere was willing to teach us. There were no books and no videos, and examples of watches with enamel dials are tens of thousands of pounds.”

The method involves placing multiple layers of powdered glass to a copper disc which is then fired at high temperature resulting in a remarkable depth of colour.

AnOrdain's watches have a five year waiting list (Image: Contributed)

The tiniest kink, flaw or warp is discarded. 

The ‘stamping’ process that achieves a perfectly flat disc involves 200 tonnes of pressure.

A dial can take more than 12 hours to create.

Having figured out the enamel dial process, Lewis had then to source a high-quality movement to put in the watches, and skilled craftspeople to put them all together.

He found a watchmaker in the unlikeliest of settings.

“I was very lucky to find someone through the local chapter of the British Horological Institute who had been working as a packer in an Amazon warehouse and studying watchmaking on a distance learning course,” adds Lewis.

“He became our first watchmaker.”

AnOrdain now produces around 50 anOrdain watches a month and does additional work for some of the world’s most exclusive brands. It has four watchmakers and eight enamellers, among them a Ukrainian who is transferring his skill at making religious items to enamel dials.

Its six workshops dotted around the city will soon merge into one purpose-designed workspace in Cathcart Road.

Lewis says there is demand from people keen to learn how to make enamel dials.

“The work is highly skilled, and an enameller will take two or three years to get to the stage where they're competent.

AnOrdain plans to train more people in the skill of enamelling (Image: Contributed)

“But for a recent trainee watchmaking position we had 151 applications from all types of background - a buddhist yoga instructor, a Cambridge PhD graduate and even a puppet maker.”

“We don’t want to be massively bigger,” he stresses, “instead, we want to get better.

“We are training more enamellers and working with Strathclyde University to transfer some of the manufacturing knowledge there to making components, so we can do more of that ourselves.

“It’s going deeper into the craft and production aspects of watchmaking rather than expanding,” he adds.

“Everyone here is interested in creating things rather than churning out a production line.”