All of the gentleman who were crucial figures in late 20th century independent watchmaking are no longer with us; only their timepieces remain. Daniels’ legacy, however, lives on in Dr Roger W. Smith OBE.

Having been hand-picked as an apprentice of the famously prickly Daniels in 1997 – Daniels had rejected all apprentices before - Smith was instrumental in helping Daniels complete the Millennium series of watches powered by Omega’s Co-Axial movements, a three-year project that ended in 2001. After which he was largely responsible for the development, construction and production of the Daniels Anniversary watch launched in 2010 and which a decade later, is witnessing its last watches in the process of being delivered.

Smith not only learnt the skill of making a watch by hand from Daniels but also inherited the Daniels mantle of English watchmaking – quite literally, as Smith now works out of Daniels’ workshop on the Isle of Man. Since 2001, Smith produced wristwatches under his own name, and like the first generation of contemporary artisanal watchmakers, very much in the style of Daniels and Breguet before him. Beyond style, Smith is very much a man of substance occupying much of his time spent on research with advancing the practical limits of the Co-Axial escapement by way of his reductive approach towards the design of the escape wheel.