FUTURE PERFECT

Everything that goes into British clockmaker Sinclair Harding's spectacular works of art

- Martin Green

Sometimes, passion overtakes reason. It puts you in a stream that feels natural yet exciting and ushers you into making an almost organic decision that defies logic. Robert Bray made exactly such a decision in 1995, when he decided to take over the clockmaker Sinclair Harding.

What makes this decision so exceptional is that, at the time, Sinclair Harding was one week away from closing for good. Its order books were empty, as was the manufacture as there was also no staff left. On top of that, Bray not only had no prior experience but also four young children at home. What should have been a recipe for disaster became a trail to triumph. The seed for this may very well have been Bray's approach to business. While lacking experience in this specific field, he immediately set out with the ambition to become a true manufacture, able to create each and every part used in a Sinclair Harding clock themselves. As clock making requires quite a wide variety of different expertise and manufacturing processes, from gears and bells to fusee chains, this is quite a daunting task, but a goal that was met in 2017.

Another unique part of Bray's approach