George Daniels Millennium

Daniels conceived the co-axial escapement in the mid-1970s and spent more than two decades being turned away by the Swiss. Once Omega agreed to industrialize it (the launch came at Basel in 1999), he designed a 37mm wristwatch of his own to celebrate and planned about a dozen for friends. Daniels was in his early seventies, and most of his hand-built pocket watches were already behind him. Roger Smith, in his late twenties, had only just been told he was 'now a watchmaker' after years spent building his second pocket watch. The Millennium was one of his earliest projects.

Lead photo is of the actual example offered by Sotheby's, remaining photography here courtesy of a prior sale by A Collected Man.

Daniels had never taken an apprentice prior to his later years. Smith began in the Isle of Man workshop on 2 January 1998. Over three years the pair reworked every movement; Daniels taught Smith to engine-turn the silver dials and to cut and file the hands by hand. Demand pushed the series well past a dozen. It’s largely understood that 47 were made in yellow gold and 8 in white gold; 55 in total, though that’s an estimate.

In a lever escapement, the pallets slide across the escape-wheel teeth and depend on oil; as it degrades, amplitude falls and service comes due. The co-axial delivers impulse with a pushing rather than sliding action, all but removing that friction, and Daniels had proven it in seven of his own pocket watches between 1979 and 1994. Omega and ETA industrialized it, and the deal gave Daniels a supply of the first co-axial ébauches. He and Smith gilded the plates, blued the screws, added a calendar module and an engine-turned gold rotor, with engraving by Charles Scarr.

The details collectors love: the date sits at six, where Daniels’ pocket watches carried their seconds, and the crown sits near eight. The prototype became Daniels’ own watch. Alan Banbery, the longtime Patek Philippe executive, ordered one in white gold. And in lieu of a bonus, Smith took the final example in 2001 and asked to co-sign the dial, making it the only watch ever signed by both men; the caseback carries his name and “01.” He later sold it to fund his own company, and in November 2023 it made CHF 2,177,500 at Sotheby’s Geneva. This one is heading to auction in a few week's time.