Phillips In Association With Bacs & Russo And The Hour Glass Present George Daniels 100 “The Genesis Of Artisanal Watchmaking ”
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Key takeaways
• The George Daniels 100 exhibition at IAMWATCH 2026 in Singapore features 22 iconic timepieces reuniting to honor the centenary of the master watchmaker’s birth.
• The historic event marks the very first time George Daniels’ highly consequential Space Traveller I and Space Traveller II pocket watches are exhibited together.
• Presented by Phillips and The Hour Glass, the exhibition includes the premier of a documentary examining Daniels’ legacy as the godfather of independent artisanal watchmaking.
A Historic Centenary Exhibition at IAMWATCH 2026 in Singapore brings together twenty-two watches by George Daniels.
Celebrating the life and legacy of Britain’s greatest watchmaker on the centenary of his birth. Twenty-two watches made by George Daniels reunited for the first time in nearly two decades.
The exhibition marks the first encounter of the two most consequential pocket watches from George Daniels, the Space Traveller I and Space Traveller II.
The exhibition features the avant-première of a new film examining George Daniels’ profound influence on watchmaking and his legacy as the godfather of independent artisanal watchmaking.
George Daniels, Space Traveller I & II, 1982
(SINGAPORE) – Phillips, in Association with Bacs & Russo and The Hour Glass, are proud to announce an unprecedented exhibition of George Daniels’ defining works. Comprising twenty-two exceptional watches, the exhibition will be on view at IAMWATCH 2026, a gathering of makers dedicated to independent artisanal watchmaking, from November 12-15 at The Singapore EDITION.
George Daniels’ Body of Work
Dr. George Daniels CBE (1926-2011) was a British watchmaker widely regarded as one of the most influential of the modern era. A true Renaissance man, he was a self-taught horologist, engineer, and master craftsman who devoted his life to preserving and advancing traditional hand-made watchmaking.
In his lifetime, he made twenty-four pocket watches and two wristwatches (the Four-Minute Tourbillon and the Spring Case Tourbillon) before continuing his Millennium and Anniversary series with his apprentice, Roger W. Smith. With each watch taking over 2,500 hours to create—a good part of a year—this number reveals the enormous scale of Daniels’ achievement.
He mastered thirty-two of the thirty-four disciplines required to craft a watch by hand and detailed his work in his seminal book, “Watchmaking.”
The Centenary
This year marks the centenary of George Daniels’ birth, providing a moment to reflect on the life and legacy of this legendary British watchmaker. Today, curiosity about independent artisanal watchmaking has never been stronger, renewing interest in those first intrepid independent watchmakers, but back then, it was a very different time.
A Different Era
The world had lost interest in mechanical watchmaking; everyone was under the spell of the new quartz technology coming out of Japan. Continuing on the mechanical path was widely seen as pure madness. Add to this the fact that there were no computer-aided design programs, CNC machines, or computers to support the process; it was not only a different time in terms of consumer interest, but also in terms of production capabilities.
George Daniels was working in a whole other dimension.
Luckily, he wasn’t entirely alone in his love for handcrafted watchmaking and survived in the modern age, amid all the technological innovation and industrialization around him. Roger Smith remembers this time fondly: “He always used to say to me, ‘Roger, the one thing we do here is make watches; we push forward mechanical timekeeping, that’s our focus. Let everyone else make Christmas baubles, and we’ll do the serious stuff.’”
The Mission for Relevance
Continuing the mechanical path didn’t mean he was repeating the past; he was constantly looking for ways to improve, innovate, and make the mechanical watch relevant again.
His most famous invention was the co-axial escapement, the first major escapement development since Thomas Mudge invented the lever escapement 200 years earlier.
The co-axial escapement reduced reliance on lubrication and delivered greater long-term precision. Yet George Daniels’ ambition extended beyond creating a superior mechanism; he wanted the Swiss watchmaking industry to adopt his technology, a goal he ultimately achieved with Omega.
Describing Daniels merely as the inventor of the co-axial escapement would be far too simplistic. His greatest achievement was fully integrating invention, craftsmanship, and independence. He was simultaneously a watchmaker, engineer, craftsman, designer, problem-solver and author.
Space Traveller I & II
The George Daniels 100 exhibition marks the first time in history that the Space Travellers I & II are being exhibited together. Few moments in watchmaking history bring two masterpieces together and, in their presence, reveal the evolution of a singular idea in its fullest form. The reunion of George Daniels’ two Space Traveller watches is one such moment.
Made in 1982, the Space Traveller I and the Space Traveller II occupy a unique position within Daniels’ work. They are not simply two examples of the same model, nor are they conventional variations on a theme. Rather, they represent two closely related stages in one man’s work.
The first is the original expression of an extraordinary idea; the second is its refinement and further development. The first Space Traveller was sold immediately, but Daniels soon regretted letting it go, so rather than simply recreating the original, he used the second piece to take the concept further. He added a chronograph that measures both mean solar and sidereal time, integrating this complication into an already exceptionally intricate mechanism. The Space Traveller II became Daniels’ personal watch until his passing in 2011.
The Legacy
Without George Daniels, the independent watchmaking we celebrate today would look profoundly different; in fact, one could argue it might not exist at all. Daniels is the godfather of independent artisanal watchmaking, a creative horological genre that has become one of today’s most innovative and sought-after. He bridged the great tradition of Breguet with the watchmakers of the past, setting the stage for the boom in independent watchmaking that followed in his wake.
For collectors and scholars, Daniels’ creations matter far beyond their rarity. They constitute a remarkably concentrated record of one man’s attempt to reconsider virtually every aspect of mechanical watchmaking: its escapements, complications, architecture, finishing and even the process by which a watch should be made.
To celebrate this legacy, Phillips, in Association with Bacs & Russo, has created a special documentary that examines the enduring reach of Daniels’ ideas and influence through the eyes of the watchmakers who followed in his footsteps. Filmed in the Isle of Man, England, and Switzerland, and featuring interviews and archival footage from The George Daniels Educational Trust, this film pays tribute to a foundational figure in the modern independent watchmaking movement. It will have its avant-premiere during IAMWATCH on November 14.
Aurel Bacs, Senior Consultant, Phillips Watches shares: “I truly believe that without George Daniels, we would not be here today, in the presence of the next generation’s brightest, cleverest and most creative horological minds and makers. And so, what better occasion for Phillips to partner with The Hour Glass at IAMWATCH to celebrate, honor and venerate the centenary of the birth of the greatest watchmaker of the 20th century?”
Michael Tay, Group Managing Director of The Hour Glass, adds: “We have long taken the view that George Daniels was the first true independent watchmaker of the twentieth century. His work is so fundamentally central to the current state of independent artisanal watchmaking that one cannot fully appreciate today’s creations without understanding his role in making them possible. He proved that watchmaking could remain personal, inventive and uncompromising, and in doing so, created a path that generations of watchmakers have since followed. Roger Smith, who apprenticed to him, continues the method. François-Paul Journe has spoken publicly of him as a mentor. He is, undisputedly, the godfather of contemporary independent artisanal watchmaking.
“The George Daniels 100 exhibition we are presenting in Singapore assembles twenty-two of Daniels’ watches in the centenary year of his birth. That is the greater part of everything he completed in a working lifetime, and it allows us to look beyond the individual pieces to the scale of his influence — to see where so much of what we now value came from, and to recognize how profoundly his ideas, his example and his independence continue to shape the culture that IAMWATCH exists to support. Among them are both Space Travellers, apart since 1982 and never once shown together. For most of my career, I had dreamt of seeing them in the same room, and that it happens here is both historic and defining.”
After IAMWATCH, the exhibition will travel to Phillips London in early 2027. For more information and future dates, please visit https://ift.tt/giUYjku.
IAMWATCH
PRIVATE VIEW (BY INVITATION ONLY) | Thursday, November 12, 2026, 2 p.m. – 5 p.m.
VERNISSAGE (BY INVITATION ONLY) | Thursday, November 12, 2026, 5 p.m. – 9 p.m.
PUBLIC DAYS | Friday, November 13 – Sunday, November 15, 2026, 11 a.m. – 8 p.m.
LOCATION: The Singapore EDITION, 38 Cuscaden Road, Singapore 249731
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