Complicated Collectors: Dr Eugen Gschwind
The dinner in Basel had reached the stage where the porcelain was being cleared, but the tension at the table remained heavier than the silverware. Dr Eugen Gschwind, a man who wore his erudition as comfortably as his tailored suits, watched his guest with the predator’s patience that had defined his four decades of collecting. Across from him sat George Daniels, the English horologist and watchmaker who had single-handedly dragged the concept of the handmade watch out of the grave of history. Daniels was brilliant, notoriously opinionated, and, according to some, firmly convinced that he was the spiritual reincarnation of Abraham-Louis Breguet. François-Paul Journe´s 3/84 pocketwatch, Dr Gscwind´s first commission. Image SJX composite – F.P. Journe Gschwind liked Daniels. He championed the Englishman’s genius, yet remained too dogmatic to ever buy his work. He had famously toasted Daniels at a society dinner as the ‘greatest living watchmaker,’ only to follow it with the dry, smiling addendum: ‘But only the second-best watchmaker who ever lived.’ Tonight, however, was not about jests. It was the culmination of a long-simmering technical argument. For years, Gschwind had chided Daniels about his reliance on the 15-second remontoir d’égalité. To Daniels, this mechanism, which rewound a secondary spring every quarter-minute to smooth out the torque of the mainspring, was the ultimate solution to the problem of isochronism. Gschwind viewed it was a compro...
Fratello
