Giving a straightforward definition of independent watchmaking is a near impossible task. In recent years, the question has become even harder to answer – ask any collector what they would define as “independent” and you’ll almost certainly get a wide range of answers, each drawing different parameters for the category, or defining it by completely different rules.

Notably, a condition for becoming a member of the Académie Horlogère des Créateurs Indépendants (AHCI) is that the watchmaker should “independently develop and produce their creations” but, once again, leaves the word “independent” up for debate. In the context of the AHCI’s creation, we can perhaps comfortably assume that they mean watchmakers who are independent of big brands or larger conglomerates. But since then, the world of independents has only grown and, with it, the many different interpretations of watchmaking that each artisan brings to the table.

At its very core, the term “independent” is defined as “not [being] influenced or controlled in any way by other people, events, or things”. Within watchmaking, this does not only have financial implications, but can also have creative, technological, or literal ones, especially regarding the watchmakers themselves. We break down a few of these binaries in an attempt to make sense of the factors that feed the debate.

The first impression that comes to mind when we think of an “independent watchmaker” might be an overly romanticised one. As collector Steve Hallock, founder of TickTocking, and former president of MB&F North America, puts it, “If you asked most people to describe what they imagine when they think of Rolex, they think of a very quaint Swiss chateau with one watchmaker who’s toiling over this one watch for a very long time. Then, of course, you get into it and you realise that’s totally not what Rolex is. People get disillusioned with Rolex once they realise how big it actually is – but these smaller independents are the closest thing to that romantic ideal in the watch world, very much the Platonic ideal of a watchmaker.”

George Daniels is perhaps one such example. A famous British independent watchmaker who needs no introduction, he stands out as a pillar of this community, a man utterly dedicated to his craft, working in almost complete solitude on a tiny island away from the rest of the world. From the fight to be acknowledged for his work on the Co-Axial escapement, to the books that he wrote to help revive traditional watchmaking and to instruct individuals in how to make a watch completely from sc