The New Version of Illinois Watch Is Small, But Mighty

A century in the past, the Illinois Watch Firm employed greater than 1,300 folks at its manufacturing facility within the Illinois state capital of Springfield, day by day turning out a whole bunch of high-quality mechanical timepieces, largely pocket watches, in addition to some actions for wristwatches. It even had its personal astronomical observatory to measure time.

As we speak, the corporate with that title operates on a much smaller scale, largely doing watch repairs and resales, however recently designing new watches, too.

Craig Stone, a watchmaker who acquired the Illinois Watch emblems in 2009, employs three different watchmakers and an assistant, all of whom work out of a transformed Nineteenth-century carriage home within the small metropolis of Quincy on the Mississippi River, alongside Illinois’s western border. A print of the outdated Springfield manufacturing facility (which closed in 1932) hangs on one wall of Mr. Stone’s small watch showroom, the place a buyer may spend wherever from about $80 for a Caravelle to $50,000 for a Frederique Fixed.

Behind the showroom, the watchmakers work at their benches, overhauling greater than 1,000 watches a yr — greater than half of which, Mr. Stone stated, are classic Illinois. Given the dwindling variety of working watchmakers, each globally and in america, watches have been arriving from farther and farther afield, he stated.

“I assure you that we’ve gotten watches in right here from all 50 states and at the least a dozen international nations,” he stated.

Mr. Stone, 57, was an accountant and auditor about 30 years in the past when he turned inquisitive about clocks and watches, and his analysis indicated the trade would possibly make a very good new profession. He left his job in Indiana and returned to his hometown, Quincy, to review horology on the native Gem Metropolis School. After working for a number of years below a grasp watchmaker in Denver, after which for a jewellery retailer in Quincy, he ventured out on his personal in 2005, beginning to do repairs and gross sales.

The Illinois Watch title, he stated, appealed to him ever since Gem Metropolis, the place he labored on a watch made by the corporate. It turned out that Hamilton, the Pennsylvania watch firm that purchased Illinois Watch in 1928, nonetheless held the emblems, however had not used them for many years and supposed to relinquish them. (Hamilton was purchased in 1974 by what’s now Swatch Group and moved to Switzerland in 2003.)

As quickly as they turned accessible, Mr. Stone utilized to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Workplace and ultimately bought the rights.

Since then, Illinois Watch has issued 5 to fifteen new fashions a yr — quartz or automated mechanical timepieces, with Swiss actions — assembled by a personal label firm. And in 2020, Mr. Stone debuted his first design assembled in-house: a mannequin known as the Stone ($1,950), a restricted version of 200 items. Mr. Stone stated lately that each one however 32 had been offered.

The Stone is a 44-millimeter chrome steel watch with a Swiss ETA-made manual-wind motion. The engraving, remaining meeting and testing had been executed on the premises in Quincy.

Mr. Stone stated he took a couple of design cues from the unique firm; for instance, he positioned the sub-seconds (the small dial marking the seconds) at 9 o’clock on the dial, a characteristic typically seen in classic Illinois fashions. However he wished this to be a contemporary watch that was his personal, not a replica.

The unique Illinois Watch was established at a time when American watch firms comparable to Waltham and Elgin had essentially the most superior watchmaking capabilities on the planet, in accordance with Fredric J. Friedberg, a retired company lawyer who collects classic Illinois wristwatches and has written extensively concerning the firm.

“The watch trade in america was doing meeting line manufacturing a long time earlier than Henry Ford ever put a automobile collectively,” he stated in a cellphone interview from his house in Irvine, Calif.

Illinois Watch, initially referred to as the Springfield Watch Firm, started operations in 1870, 5 years after President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. But it surely had connections to Lincoln as the corporate’s first president, John Todd Stuart, had been Lincoln’s regulation companion and was a cousin of Mary Todd, Lincoln’s spouse. John W. Bunn, who had been an in depth good friend of Lincoln, additionally was concerned in it.

The corporate would go on to supply a railroad pocket watch known as the A. Lincoln and a women’ wristwatch known as the Mary Todd, stated Mr. Friedberg, 79.

The creator’s first e book about Illinois watches got here out in 2004, adopted in 2018 by “The Illinois Watch and Its Hamilton Years: The Finale of a Nice American Watch Firm,” a five-volume set totaling greater than 1,600 pages.

“I need the corporate to reside on after I’m gone, and into perpetuity,” Mr. Friedberg stated, including that he was notably drawn to the Artwork Deco type of a lot of its wristwatches. At one level, he stated, he had greater than 700 Illinois watches in his assortment.

Requested concerning the present iteration of Illinois Watch, Mr. Friedberg stated he would have most well-liked that the fashionable watches look extra just like the originals, though he wished Mr. Stone and his enterprise effectively. “I’m a purist,” he stated. “I need the watch precisely because it was launched from the manufacturing facility.”

As for Mr. Stone, plans for this yr embody assembling a particular version for a personal group in St. Louis: males’s and ladies’s variations of an 18-karat gold automated watch, priced at greater than $26,000 every. This one will even have a Swiss motion manufactured by ETA, however the case and fingers are to be made in america. And, Mr. Stone stated, he’s within the preliminary stage of designing the following in-house Illinois Watch mannequin.

“We’re not the unique firm,” Mr. Stone stated, “however we wish to produce one thing that lives as much as the unique title, as a result of they did make very nice watches, and I don’t suppose anyone can dispute that.”