City A.M.

21st November, 2019

"British revivalist Fears Watches is, among a handful of other homegrown upstarts, reminding us that it wasn't always Switzerland, you know; England was a world leader in horology, until war and sluggish modernisation saw off so many noble enterprises during the 20th century. And so it went with a sizeable Bristolian watchmaker founded in 1846 by Edwin Fear, only to be wound down in the Sixties two generations later. Thankfully, with domestic upstarts on the rise, his fourth generation - Edwin's great-great-great-grandson Nicholas Bowman-Scargill - has seen fit to bring the family firm out of dormancy. And how.

After a muted, quartz-powered launch at London's annual SalonQP showcase in 2016, Bowman-Scargill seems to have finally found his mojo. Not only does the Brunswick revive a cushion-shaped design from the Jazz Age with particularly contemporary élan, but in an oversaturated market of blue-dialled watches, the latest, manual-wind mechanical version (£3,350) manages a decadent navy like not other - all down to a volatile galvanic process, with a high failure rate, combining with the hand-grained surfaces to catch the light beautifully."