Baltimore Social Innovation Journal, Fall 2016 Fall 2016 | Page 20

Giving You
the Time of Day
A watchmaker to the stars shares the wonder of mechanical watchmaking.
By Lisa Simeone

When Steven Richardson saw news
coverage of the unrest in Baltimore after
Freddie Gray’s death, he thought it was
time to come home. He knew he could
do something positive for his native city,
just as he had done in his adopted city of
New York. His path in life had led him from
boyhood in Edmondson Village, to art
gallery ownership in Federal Hill, to gem
collecting in Thailand and Brazil. That path
may have been meandering for a while, but
now Richardson’s life clicks as precisely as
the watches he makes.
Richardson started out with silversmithing.
He was fascinated by the silversmith’s
trade, how someone could take a lump of
metal and mold it into something beautiful.
Apprenticing himself to a craftsman, he
learned how to fashion simple bangles
and then more elaborate jewelry, using
platinum, gold, and gemstones. Five
years later, he traveled to Brazil, where
he learned gemology on the job in Rio
de Janeiro. It was in Rio that he began
noticing watches – Rolex, Cartier, Breitling.
When he accidentally doused his watch at
Copacabana Beach and took it to a shop to
pg. 1 9

get repaired, he was astounded to see the
watchmaker take the entire thing apart and
put it back together again. He was hooked.
From then on, Richardson began learning
the craft of making ti mepieces by hand.
He moved to New York where he worked
under a master watchmaker. He went to
Geneva, Switzerland, “the mechanized
Mecca,” as he calls it. He began studying
the history of watchmaking and of Benjamin
Banneker, the African-American statesman
and mathematician, whom he believes can
be an inspiration to young people. With his
company, Art of Horology, Richardson not
only creates custom, handcrafted watches,
often for celebrities, he also teaches
other people how to do it. He started an
instruction program in New York public
schools, and watched as young students
became as enchanted with the work as he
was.
A watchmaker sits at a high desk, his chin
just above the top, with his tools at eye
level. He wears a magnifying glass, called
a loop, over one eye. And then he sets
to work, manipulating the tiny gears and