Peter Speake-Marin Interview: A Big LeapPosted by suanfutt
Peter Speake-Marin Interview: Big Leap Forward Peter Speake-Marin was in Singapore recently, he explains why, despite everything, he decided to create his own movement from scratch, down to the screws. Thanks to Karen at Sincere Watch, I was able to meet up with Peter Speake-Marin on 31 August when he swung by Singapore on his “world tour”, which covers several Asian countries as well as those in Europe, and cities in the USA. An independent watchmaker whose collection includes classically inspired watches with a distinctive design twist, as well as art dial watches from collaborations with other artists, Speake-Marin has recently taken the very extreme step of creating his own movement from scratch, down to its screws. The following is the short conversation we had. I have since learned that Speake-Marin was robbed while in the US, ending his world tour with all belongings and watches gone. One can never be thankful enough though, that he was unharmed. I would just like to say that what impressed me most, is that while Speake-Marin is a watchmaker by training, swimming in the technical stream, he has nevertheless achieved a unique design language for his watches: the man-sized round case and lugs match the robust build of the large in-house movements within, yet the magic on the art dials and the way his bridges and plates are shaped like botanical art from the pages of some 19th century book on natural history, add more than a splash of refinement and finesse. Almost quaint, and quite sublime… What have you brought to show us? I want to talk about the SM2 which is my new caliber. The first series watch with the SM2 is the Marin-1, which comes out next year. Most details about that have already been published… with this tour, I’d like to show u something which hasn’t been printed about much…that’s the 1in20, that’s 20 new watches that have the SM2 caliber. Some are unique, while two or three might have the same dial, but come in different case materials; some are styled gothic, there is also maki-e, while some look very technical; others are a QP, engine-turned, or with enamel dial. A lot of them are pre-sold and much depends on what the client wants. The engine-turned watch was a request from an English client; the simple piece from an American client.  1in20 QP, enamel dial, 1of 3 examples Is that how you plan lease watches in the future, in collections of 20? Not at all. In the future, there are two main lines. There will be the Marins, and there will be a continuation of the Art series. For the most part, the Art series are unique. The maki-e are always unique; I’ve had some orders from some clients where I’ll be making a small series… a Russian client asked for the imperial Russian eagle – a very strong design with a very unique approach and that I’ll probably make five or six pieces. But by and large, Art pieces will mostly be unique. Note: Then Speake-Marin proudly shows off the skulls watch. Unfortunately, no picture of that in the CD that Sincere sent me… a stunning watch, the skulls are arrayed in such a fashion that from an angle, I thought I was looking at a clover leaf, until I got closer, and see that it’s actually not petals, but four glistening skulls. Macabre, deliciously so.  1in20 QP, engine-turned two-tone dial, 1of 3 examples PSM on the skulls watch: This piece is actually a work in progress; I will finish it when I get back from the tour. The heads are being remodelled; there are 490 diamonds set into the case, in 18k gold, and I’ve added a blued steel chapter ring which creates a shadow that emphasizes the depth of the skulls. Even in normal light, it is stunning; and whichever way you view the watch, you see pretty much the same thing. People either love it or they hate it, it’s pretty clear which way. Some people find it unlucky, but I adore it. As a concept, skull watches go back to the 17th century. What I do, are not gimmicks, but my interpretation of either the technical or artistic pieces, I do it the way I want to do it.  Skulls watch, ripped from PSM's website I spent the last five years since I started making watches under my own brand, making virtually every type of watch, except chronographs. I’ve made repeaters, tourbillons, quantieme perpetuelles… and it feels like I’ve been finding my way, my style, studying the market, getting to the point where I have my own caliber. And it feels like from this moment, everything becomes more focused, more clear. It’s like the door is opening and I’m beginning to see the light on the other side.  1in20 QP, silvered engine-turned dial, 1of 3 examples Is this your first world tour? I did one three years ago; the reason I do this “round the world” trip is because there’s a ticket you can buy with British Airways where you can do 16 flights that take you round the world, business class, for CHF 10,000.Bearing in mind that if you do a return flight to Japan alone, it’s CHF 4,000. So I travel all around the world, I get to eat everyehere, I get to sleep comfortably because its business class… it’s an amazing deal! I’m in the process of re-financing my business, so I’m looking for investors, and I’m trying to create as much noise as I can, meeting people, clients, and finding new points of sale in America. 40 intense days of travelling, but I’m packing a year’s worth of business into that in a sense. What are some travel impressions you can share with us? What did you see or hear that stuck? Things are getting better; people are becoming far more optimistic. For instance, the reception I got in China is incredible. It seems doors are just opening in every direction. I don’t know if financially things are getting better, or people are just sick of being depressed.  1in20 red gold 2-piece enamel dial, 1of 2 examples I have spoken to collectors, retailers, distributors… they all wanted to work with me, to be involved. I don’t exactly understand why, because I’m a tiny, tiny watch independent, but they all seemed to believe that I have a very exciting future ahead of me. I think part of it is a reaction in the market, based in general on a return to traditional values, to a certain classical horology, and at the same time the need for products that are different from everybody else’s, that has have their own DNA, identity. And it feels like I’m ticking every box in what I’m doing. What are some comments you’ve been handed about your watches? It took a long time, but the general design has come to be accepted. It’s a very strong styling, and people today can identify a Speake-Marin, they have come to be accustomed to it. In the future, I have different designs which retain the same DNA, but become somewhat slimmer, and I know will appeal not just to collectors but to a larger market as well, people who are searching for more conventional proportions – because there is a return to convention, getting away from mammoth watches that we’ve seen in the past. They’ll never go back to the size that watches used to be – men’s watches 50 years ago were sized like women’s or mid-sized watches today; but there is a return to a smaller size. Future Marin watches will be like that, and everything that I am doing now, is very much of this time. All the pieces are falling into place.  Maki-e horses, unique piece on mother-of-pearl Were you trained in design? My original training doesn’t cover design, development, project management… and I have come to do all of these things. Aside from my collaboration with Mushu Yamasaki for the maki-e range, I designed everything you see here, from the case, to the dial, the movement: everything is from me. My nature is such that as an individual, the moment I stop learning, I change, I do something different. And that is why I became independent because as an independent, you pretty much have to do everything. It’s this need to grow; and if you don’t grow, you die. In my career, I have touched on every sphere. Cos the moment I master something, I go on to something else. Today, with everything that I’ve learned, I have a clear view of what I want to do in terms of creativity, and in a functional way, how to make that actually happen. Also with all of my commercial experience, both helping companies develop and acting as a consultant, I know what I need to do to bring all the concepts that I have for Speake-Marin into reality. The Shimoda with the Chinese character hours… did you collaborate with a calligrapher? No, for the characters, I literally scanned them from the Internet, then I traced the numbers, and had a Japanese watchmaker who works with me, show me the subtleties of the brush strokes, where things should be smaller, bigger. It sounds crazy, but I don’t actually own a watch because I’m always testing new pieces. I would love to have a Shimoda; but right now, my favourite piece which I have sold, is the skull watch. I have never made a piece that has got as much life in it as that watch. It’s like a death watch, but it’s just absolutely extraordinary.  For a Russian client, featuring the double-headed eagle of that nation's coat of arms Tell us about your own movement, the SM2. So many watch movements today are designed from a purely commercial aspect of how to do something in some kind of quantity -- for mass production. Which is fair enough, since the purpose of a business is to make money. But I wanted to make something which is intrinsically a watchmaker’s watch, a watchmaker’s movement, without making the same kind of compromises that most companies do, from a watchmaker’s point of view. This means the caliber had to be large. I wanted to make it larger because the larger a timepiece is, the stronger it tends to be, the longer it will last, and the more accurate it will be because of the larger balance you can have. This is all just basic watchmaking logic. Why is it so difficult for other brands to make bigger movements? They can do it for sure, it’s just that if they make a smaller movement, then they can use it in a much larger array of watches. But in reducing the size of the movement, you make certain technical compromises. Maybe it doesn’t really matter since the precision is sufficient for most people, but from my puritanical point of view, I wanted to make something that was the very best of what I could do, something which will last as long as possible, which is as accurate as possible. And aesthetically, the bigger the watch, the more space you have to work. In a hand-finished watch, one’s appreciation of the craftsmanship is limited if the watch is too small. On the other hand, you can’t help noticing the skill that went into finishing a watch if it is larger, and I want to show people the essence of watchmaking craft.  SM2 movement What does making your own caliber mean for you? What I’ve done to date, whether it’s with ETA, Dimier, Christophe Claret, is I took existing calibers, and I modified them, turned them into hybrids. For example, if I take a movement from Claret, then you have certain things that you have to respect from the very beginning: the setting mechanism, the balance, the proportions of the train, the thickness of the watch; things which you just cannot change. What you can do is work around it, change the aesthetics, improve the materials, etc. When you start with your own caliber, you have a complete blank sheet, so you can do pretty much anything that you wanted to do. I wanted to respect the same kind of proportions from marine chronometry – big barrel, big balance, big train, big setting mechanism. Certain gearing in the SM2’s setting mechanism are very severe, the angles are much larger than in conventional watchmaking because I had more space available to me to make something that was that much stronger.   SM2 movement To what extent is the SM2 different from a conventional or off-the-shelf movement? A lot of screws used in conventional watches are simply too thin – they flex. I wanted to make mine bigger, stronger; I also wanted to make my pinions stronger. I wanted to have my own unique regulation system for the balance; I wanted to have a Breguet overcoil, I wanted to have my own balance, I wanted to over-engineer the bridges so that everything is pinned down, so that all the components are strapped down to the main plate, using more screws, bigger, better screws. I did everything exactly as I wanted to and the result is something completely different from watches from any other company. Was it expensive? Very! I have to refine that in the future. One reason why I must raise my quantities slowly, is to be able to reduce unit costs, which is now absolutely astronomical. I just didn’t want to compromise, and the only way you can avoid that, is if you start from a blank sheet. How much more does it cost to have your own movement as opposed to modifying available movements? If I included everything that I spent, it would probably take me at least five years to reclaim the money; but all the development costs are not absorbed by the final product, much of this was actually paid for by the first ten watches of the 1in20. The 1in20 was actually a concept I designed to be able to pre-finance the development costs which is dramatically more expensive when you make your own caliber as opposed to a hybrid. In a hybrid, even if you modify all the components around the existing main plate, a lot of the components may exist already. When you construct a completely new caliber, there isn’t a component which already exists. For my caliber, I make even the escape wheel, lever and balances – every single component in that caliber, is made for that caliber, from pinions, screws, bridges, wheels, winding mechanism, balance, balance spring. A one-man shop? I designed everything, I have a constructor who puts it all onto paper, and then I have a dozen different companies fabricate the components. It’s normally the kind of project that’s only attempted by big companies with big, big bureaus. But a lot of them don’t, although they’ll use components and other movements for totally good reasons – they’re proven, and its more economical, and it means they can do the kind of quantities that they require. Why did you have to create your own? The SM2 is my first caliber, and whatever I do with this, if I do this to the best of my ability, then I have a foundation for my future, but also, that I can do whatever I want. Meaning, if I eventually want to make a larger quantity, if I want to sell a movement, finish it in a different way, like a Patek or an Audemars to bring down the cost, I can still do that. If you start on the very highest level, it gives you loads of options afterwards to do whatever you want. It gives you a completely open arena in which to play. How does the SM2 perform? From the very first prototypes, everything has worked to my expectations; there are a few things which took way too long to assemble, so in the production series, there will be modifications to make some of the assembly easier. The regulation system has taken a lot longer to adjust than I had wanted, but that’s why we make a pre-series, to do testing, to find out what can be done better, or easier. Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/27/2009 10:25AM by IanS.
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