The New Model of Illinois Watch Is Small, However Mighty

A century in the past, the Illinois Watch Firm employed greater than 1,300 individuals at its manufacturing unit within the Illinois state capital of Springfield, each 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 identify 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 logos 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 A print of the outdated Springfield manufacturing unit (which closed in 1932) hangs on one wall of Mr. Stone’s small watch showroom, the place a buyer may spend anyplace 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 12 months — greater than half of which, Mr. Stone stated, are classic Illinois. Given the dwindling variety of working watchmakers, each globally and in the USA, 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 a minimum of a dozen overseas international locations,” he stated.

Mr. Stone, 57, was an accountant and auditor about 30 years in the past when he turned thinking about clocks and watches, and his analysis indicated the business would possibly make new profession. He left his job in Indiana and returned to his hometown, Quincy, to check horology on the native Gem Metropolis Faculty. 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 identify, 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 logos, 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 out there, Mr. Stone utilized to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Workplace and finally bought the rights.

Since then, Illinois Watch has issued 5 to fifteen new fashions a 12 months — quartz or automated mechanical timepieces, with Swiss actions — assembled by a non-public label firm. And in 2020, Mr. Stone debuted his first design assembled in-house: a mannequin referred to as the Stone ($1,950), a restricted version of 200 items. Mr. Stone stated not too long ago 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 have 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 generally seen in classic Illinois fashions. However he needed this to be a contemporary watch that was his personal, not a duplicate.

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

“The watch business in the USA was doing meeting line manufacturing a long time earlier than Henry Ford ever put a automobile collectively,” he stated in a telephone interview from his dwelling in Irvine, Calif.

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

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

The writer’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 would like the corporate to dwell on after I’m gone, and into perpetuity,” Mr. Friedberg stated, including that he was significantly 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 popular that the trendy watches look extra just like the originals, though he wished Mr. Stone and his enterprise effectively. “I’m a purist,” he stated. “I would like the watch precisely because it was launched from the manufacturing unit.”

As for Mr. Stone, plans for this 12 months embrace assembling a particular version for a non-public 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 may also have a Swiss motion manufactured by ETA, however the case and palms are to be made in the USA. And, Mr. Stone stated, he’s within the preliminary stage of designing the subsequent 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 identify, as a result of they did make very nice watches, and I don’t suppose anyone can dispute that.”