Schofield is driven by an obsession with the entire design journey. Every detail matters; not only the watches themselves, but also the straps, packaging, graphics, photography, website and everything in between. The aim is simple; to create beautiful objects that feel coherent, considered and worth keeping.

Inspiration comes from unexpected places – maritime heritage, lighthouses, folklore, science fiction and the eccentricities of British culture. The result is a collection of unusual watches that are as much about ideas and thinking as they are about engineering.

Since 2007 Schofield has followed its own course, largely unmoved by industry trends and fashion. The goal has never been to make watches for everybody, but to make watches for people who value depth, detail and all the possible reasons for something to exist.

Based beside the River Adur in Sussex, Schofield operates from the Riverside Store, a curious little shop styled somewhere between a dressmaker’s boutique and a cabinet of curiosities. Visitors are always welcome.

Giles Ellis Schofield’s Principal Keeper has delivered numerous seminars on design, watchmaking, engineering and manufacture. He is an Assistant Professor in Industrial Design at the University of Sussex.

Schofield approaches watchmaking as a complete design exercise. Every visible and invisible component is considered, specified and refined to support the final piece.

Movements are selected pragmatically from proven Swiss manufacturers. Rather than investing resources into developing proprietary calibres, Schofield focuses on design, engineering, materials, finishing and manufacture.

All case work is made along the coast in a small precision machine shop, the same one Schofield has used for over fifteen years. They have been responsible for nearly every watch produced since Daymark. Giles specifies and engineers every tenth of a millimetre of everything you touch.

Cases, case backs and many components arrive at Riverside in an unfinished state. Final finishing, texturing, tumbling, ageing and surface treatment are carried out in-house according to the requirements of each design.

Schofield does not use a single supplier for complete watch heads, as many brands do. Instead, suppliers are selected according to the needs of each project. A major Schofield asset is the little black book of contacts that has been nurtured since the company’s inception.

• Cases are British made
• Crystals come from China but are recoated in Switzerland by the best in the business
• Dials and hands are Swiss made
• Movements are Swiss made
• Crowns and pendant tubes are Swiss made
• Case backs are British and/or Swiss made
• Watch head assembly is undertaken in the UK to Schofield’s exacting specifications
• Straps are German Made with British materials (tweeds, leathers, etc)
• Buckles are either British or Chinese made and finished in-house
• Strap bars and pins are Chinese made
• Boxes are British made
• Packaging is British made
• Extras like Stickers and cloths are UK made

There are a few interesting points to unpack here. Where it says Made in China, it would be mad not to. If Schofield chose to have crystals made in Switzerland, they would, like almost everybody else’s, still be manufactured in China and simply cost considerably more.

Dials, hands and movements cannot currently be produced sensibly in the UK. Schofield explored this route extensively between 2012 and 2014 and invested heavily in the process. Whilst satisfactory for those specific designs, the technology proved limiting for further exploration.

Looking at the cost ratios between components, the case work alone heavily favours the watch being British made, although with the Obscura this is difficult to argue based on the US made Damascus, but it is still close to 80% cost value to UK made components.

A recent development is the increase costs of dials and hands. Schofield has increased investment into these components by roughly 8x for access to technologies that express Giles’ creativity. A level of precision in line with Schofield’s philosophy – to make watches of the highest quality. In short, the goal is to achieve a level of finishing, detail and originality usually associated with watches costing considerably more.

Giles Ellis is the founder and Principal Keeper of Schofield. His background spans design, branding, special effects, musical instrument restoration and education. Before founding Schofield he worked at the BBC, later running both a design agency and a specialist instrument restoration business.

In 2007 he began designing a watch for himself. The project grew into Schofield.

Outside work, Giles spends much of his time lifting, climbing, running and generally attempting to ignore his age. He is a father of three daughters and regards the Riverside Store as a place of quiet productivity.