Eccentric Indie British Watchmaking Personified by the Schofield Obscura

With the appearance of so many niche indie brands, it can be hard to keep track of who’s who. Based in the UK, the Schofield Watch Company was not founded by a watchmaker but by the hip product designer Giles Ellis. Cultivating his British eccentricity to the max, Ellis’ self-described “British coastal styling” is inspired by lighthouses of the 18^th and 19^th centuries dotting the coastline. While this concept might be hard to pin down, the brand’s latest watch, the Obscura, bristles with textures, contrasting materials, luminescent details, a multi-level dial and the founder’s “new era” design vision.

Giles Ellis, a multifaceted designer and associate lecturer at the University of Sussex on industrial design, launched his first watch at the 2011 edition of Salon QP. The Signalman watch defined many of Schofield’s design tenets with its thick, robust case and buttress-style lugs. As the press release points out, the latest Obscura model is an amalgamation of design choices that “are hard to articulate in words”. Deliberately obscure with pretensions to be regarded as a “mysterious timing device”, the Obscura was seven years in the making. While first impressions might find similarities with Ming’s minimalist dials and luminescent details, there is a lot going on with the case construction and choice of materials.

The Obscura case, measuring 44mm across and 15 mm thick, is made from Damascus steel with an unusual surface finish. The robust 200m water-resistant Schofield case, with its wide base, recessed case middle and short buttressing lugs, is machined and finished in Sussex. Combined with the acid etching treatment, the Damascus steel case reveals a strange textured grey two-tone surface akin to the scales of a reptile. The strap bar holes have bronze bushings contrasting with the steel strap bar screws. Another detail is the canister-shaped crown with its knurled grip and pink-lumed logo.

Minimalist yet wildly colourful in the dark, the multi-levelled dial features machined grooves filled with coloured luminescent material with different emissions. Having worked with Black Badger, Schofield likes to play with luminescence to create a more austere face during the day and a “laser show at night”, thanks to Super-LumiNova C3 touches in pink/red with green, blue, purple and orange emissions.

The dial base is dark grey with a fine matte texture divided into different segments at different heights. The central ring is cut in half, and the hands emerge from the recessed area. The sage green hour hand is lumed while the black minutes hand is openworked; when the hands meet at noon (represented by a 0), the minutes hand reveals the lumed area of the hours hand. The small seconds sub-dial at 6 o’clock, picked out in white, red and blue, sweeps beyond its boundary and glides over the two peripheral scales.

Three smoked grey sapphire crystals on the caseback add a weird, sci-fi touch to the watch and provide a magnified yet obscure view of the manual-winding Unitas movement with a 46-hour power reserve. Equally enigmatic, seven hieroglyphs on the DLC-coated caseback in relief defy translation. They are followed by seven semaphore flag positions, the brand name and the inscription “Damascus Steel Manual Wind British Made 200m Pioneering Watchmakers from the New Era”, also in relief.

Availability & Price

The Obscura comes on a grey calfskin leather strap. It is presented in a box shaped like a canister and placed on a gimbal. Limited to 40 watches that are “not individually numbered”, the Obscura costs GBP 9,558 (incl. VAT) with free shipping in the UK. For the US, Canada, Europe and the rest of the world, the price is GBP 7,965 (excl. VAT and shipping). Available exclusively at schofieldwatchcompany.com.