Collecting Watches - Part 2
About 35 years ago I noticed that my brother Edward Dargiewicz had started collecting early 20th century wristwatches. Not only did I like those mechanical pieces of art, but I also really liked the idea of collecting watches. Obviously, I didn’t want to collect the same as Edward.
One day, visiting family in Warsaw in the early 1990s I bought at the biggest outdoor bazar in Warsaw a very well made “replica” of a Patek Philip wristwatch. I knew the history of the most famous Polish watchmaker Antoni Patek and had always dreamt of owning a Patek Philippe watch. Being a jobbing actor/director in the UK I never imagined that one day I would have enough money to buy one. When I saw a quality “replica” I bought it and decided that I would collect replicas/fakes of very well-known brands.
In the late 1990s I started to lecture at two of Taiwan’s universities and worked with theatre organizations in mainland China. Over there was easy to find quality replicas/fakes. Edward was appalled. As he was a member of the Polish Real Watch Society he gave me a lecture how improper and unethical it was to buy fakes. Not longar after the Society organised public destruction of fake watches. They hired a small tarmac steamroller, gathered over 100 fake watches, and ran them over - twice. Interestingly enough a couple of fakes still worked!
Shamed, I stopped collecting fakes and started collecting pocket watches and creating marriage wrist watches using pocket watch movements that had lost their gold or silver cases. This in turn gave me the idea of creating Scotland Watch Company and making quality contemporary wristwatches. I still hope that one day I buy my real Patek Philip, preferably the same model as my fake one.
If you have not read part one of the series, you can find it here.
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