Bernhard Lederer: A Stickler for Micromechanical Detail. Part One.

This piece tells the story of a famous watchmaker who never followed the herd.

No matter what project Bernhard Lederer participated in, the timepieces he created always showed that drawing inspiration from the achievements of great watchmakers of the past would be too much of an easy option. Over decades of hard work, Lederer developed his own signature style, fusing Northern European design with distinctive aesthetic character.

Bernhard Lederer was born in 1958 in the German town of Kornwestheim, located not far from the city of Stuttgart and Pforzheim — the German industry's world-famous watchmaking and jewelry hub. He became interested in watch making at the age of sixteen, and was seriously committed to gaining industry-specific education from the outset.

Lederer didn't give up when wasn't accepted into a specialized school. In 1976, he secured an apprenticeship at the Wuppertaler Uhrenmuseum's restoration workshop for historical timepieces. Six watchmakers worked at the restoration department but they weren't the only masters Lederer learned from.

He found blueprints and sketches by historic watchmakers were a great help, such as those left behind by the English clockmaker George Graham and French watchmaker Ferdinand Berthoud. Lederer grasped the basic principles of the craft by copying them.

Numerous historic watches housed within the walls of the museum were deemed to be beyond repair because they were so worn or missing entire parts. Lederer was motivated by what he saw as an interesting challenge and began studying techniques to make various parts for their movements.

The experience Lederer built up ultimately led to him to produce his own timepieces. Truth be told, saying that he didn't choose the best time to launch his career would be an understatement.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, quartz technology was developing rapidly all over the world, and Switzerland was no exception. At a time when everyone was interested in quartz for its accuracy and affordability, there seemed to be no demand for mechanical timepieces, not to mention table clocks or complicated pieces.

However, Bernhard Lederer was inspired by the example set by George Daniels, an English inventor and author of books on the history and technology of watchmaking. In his time, Daniels was one of the few members in the pantheon of stellar engineers who built complete watches by hand, even including the cases and dials.

Lederer had to travel to England to get his hands on a copy of a book by Daniels called Watchmaking. There was no way of getting hold of one in Germany. It goes without saying that there were no e-books back then as the internet hadn't been invented yet. Bernhard Lederer went it alone in 1979 after working at the museum for three years, and established his own firm in Ober-Roden near Frankfurt called Uhrenmanufaktur Lederer.

He still specialized in the same area of repairs and restoration work, and his main clients were collectors and auction houses. He continued to further his professional education in parallel at Pforzheim's watchmaking school, and qualified as a Master Craftsman in 1984. Lederer managed to juggle clients' orders with his studies and still found time for plans to create his own clock.

It was a masterpiece in the original sense — a watch created by an apprentice to prove his professional skills and earn the right to be called a master. The complicated astronomical Masterpiece 1986 Table Clock featured an accurate moon-phase display and calendar mechanism which worked based on the algorithm for the Gregorian calendar (also known as the secular calendar), both of which he made from scratch.

The watch was made in a style characteristic of Abraham-Louis Breguet. Lederer's peers were so impressed by his work in progress that the AHCI (Académie Horlogère des Créateurs Indépendants) didn't think twice before inviting him to join in 1985, the year of its inception. Lederer continued to work on clocks, producing one-of-a-kind pieces such as the Gravity Clock he created in the late 1980s and the mysterious "Trojka" clock built with three columns.

He did finally turn his attention to wristwatches in 1993, albeit not by choice but due to an unfortunate twist of fate. On his way to the trade show in Basel where he was set to join other watchmakers behind the AHCI stand, Lederer was involved in a car accident. The trunk of his car was crushed along with the timepiece he had intended to showcase at the watch exhibition.

The insurance company only offered 60% compensation. Disheartened, Lederer shut down Uhrenmanufaktur Lederer and nearly abandoned his career as a watchmaker altogether. But a stroke of good luck stopped him. The designer Hans Donner who had relocated from Austria and made Brazil his new home was looking for a partner for his ambitious project.

Donner heard about Lederer and suggested they team up, which ultimately resulted in Lederer producing his first wristwatch called Time Dimension. Time Dimension with its unorthodox system for indicating the time with three disks made of Zeiss glass was released in a small series with variations in 1993, and its design was the point of departure for the wristwatch collection Lederer would later develop.

Further down the line, Hans Donner helped Lederer realize another tremendous plan. They jointly created 28 monumental countdown clocks in anticipation of Brazil's 500th anniversary. The clocks with digital counters were installed in 1998 to count down the days leading up to the country's 500th anniversary on April 22, 2000.