These collectors don’t collect for the passing status a brand name brings, but from an understanding of history and the unique beauty, a work of art like a complex mechanical watch represents. I have met amazing people the world over – but in particular within SoCal – all through a shared love of horology. Few other watch manufacturers have the catalog of Seiko, nor the history for that matter, from the fantastic 6139 automatic movements of the Seiko Pogue fame to Seiko being instrumental to the start of the notorious quartz crisis in the 1970s with the Seiko Astron.Īccompanying all of the above is the phenomenal vintage watch collector community. I got hooked in high school and college on Seiko – hard. Vintage Seiko was my (and many, many others) gateway drug. For me, my father got me started in watch collecting. From my grandfather’s watch to my father’s burgeoning watch collection when I was in high school and after all my family have either been involved in or interested in, horology. Watches have been in my family for as long as I can remember. Nicholas, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today. You can find J.N Shapiro on Instagram here and can learn more at we’d like to introduce you to Nicholas Ferrell. Shapiro and hope to share the brand’s development as time goes on. It’s no surprise that I’m an admirer of Shapiro’s work, and I was honored to spend a day in his workshop observing (and participating in) his process. Again, this small group of individuals is doing all of this on their own in a small Los Angeles workshop thousands of miles away from Switzerland. This goes back to the addition of sophisticated machinery like the Haas CNC machine, as well as the proficiency in using them. What’s the plan for the future beyond ramping up production? Well, Shapiro hopes to bring the movements and cases totally in-house, steps I know he is already in the process of prototyping. (Yes, he has a full-time job on top of this.) Oh, there’s also a tortoise named Tank who patrols the workshop. Helping these two out are a couple of apprentices, young students with a passion for learning watchmaking who hail from the school in Los Angeles where Shapiro is Vice-Principal. Shapiro has done well enough to hire Artur Akmaev ( found on Instagram here), who is himself a prodigious talent in engraving and enameling. While that may not seem like a lot, you have to keep in mind that this is a small operation.
Last year, Shapiro sold about a dozen watches and that number is set to more than double this year. Shapiro is very much going to be an artisanal, small-batch production brand. Of course, “growth” is relative, and J.N. Still, it’s a big financial investment and a clear sign of the commitment to the long-term vision Shapiro has when it comes to the growth of his brand.
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Obviously, Shapiro makes a point to emphasize how tight the parameters are when he decides to use the CNC machine since the manual hand-crafting he does with dials is the cornerstone of the J.N. One of these additions to the workshop is a Haas CNC Machine that Shapiro uses for very specific purposes like prototyping movements, creating support fixtures for other machines used in the workshop, and creating some very small parts that also require a high tolerance. It’s a distinctly American vision that hinges on the belief that the combination of passion and grit is far more potent than over-relying on provincialism and over-emphasizing provenance. The workshop has progressed and evolved much like Shapiro’s skills or one of his dials at a pace that is solely determined by the deliberate intention of making his vision a reality.
All of this happens in a workshop behind Shapiro’s LA home.
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