My Father's Silver
A reticulated silver dial with hands fitted, resting on a patterned steel block
One bench · one at a time

Every dial starts in my father's silver

Discover the two lines →
The film · My Father’s Silver

A dial only shows what it is when the light moves across it.

Transparent enamel over silver, cased and timed — turned by hand so you can see the colour shift the way it does on the wrist.

The house

I learned to cast and set stones at my father's bench as a boy — his tools, his sheet, his files.

When he passed the silver to me I began cutting dials from it. Two lines came out of that: one about what silver will do if you take it to the edge of melting and stop, and one about what this country asks Black people to survive. Both are made at the same bench, by the same hand, one piece at a time.

The first line

My Father’s Silver

The line the house is named for. Silver worked to the edge of what it will survive — no message, no image, nothing but the material and the fire.

Two reticulated sterling silver dial blanks
Reticulated sterling

Taken to the edge of melting, and stopped

Material taken as far as it will go, and no further.

The eponymous line, and the one everything else is measured against. Reticulated sterling, brought to the point of collapse and pulled back. Vitreous enamel fired in stages and stoned flat. Meteorite, sliced and etched until the crystal reads. These are the dials I make when I am answering only to the metal.

Dial
Reticulated sterling · enamel · meteorite
Finishing
Applied indices, hand-set
Origin
Sheet and scrap from my father's bench
How a dial is made →
The whole silver line →
The second line

Exercise in Restraint

A body of civil rights paintings, reduced to thirty millimetres. Every dial names one person the state filed by number.

A Montgomery booking-photograph dial, cased and worn on the wrist
The booking-photograph dial on a jubilee bracelet, worn
Transfer on enamel

Where you check the time, a face that was filed by number

Faces from the movement, transferred onto enamel — opaque white, opaque black, or a transparent colour that lets the silver read through — and set where you check the time. Arrest photographs, press portraits, mug numbers. Every one of them stood up when standing up cost something, and the cost has not gone away; it has only been re-legislated.

Dial
Opaque white or black enamel; transparent colour over silver
Case
36 or 38mm steel, polished or blackened
Caseback
Engraved with the subject's name and year

Every image is transferred directly from my own paintings. They come from Exercise in Restraint, a series of four-by-seven-foot canvases built from the Montgomery booking photographs and worked in deliberately plain materials — encaustic wax, charcoal, screws, shaved wool rug, a torch and a grinder. The paintings have shown at Gallery 72, the City of Atlanta’s gallery downtown.

See the paintings →
Exercise in Restraint in full →
At the bench

Turning the dial in the light, looking for the place the surface breaks.

The bench

Six operations

Between a piece of sheet and a dial that can hold hands. Nothing here is outsourced.

A sheet of his silver going through the rolling mill
I

Rolling his silver down

Sheet, offcuts and half-finished settings from my father's bench, taken through the mill to dial gauge. The scrap becomes solder.

Two reticulated dial blanks
II

The edge of melting

Repeated depletion firings, then one pass with the torch held until the surface moves. A second too late and the piece is gone.

A dial circle scribed on reticulated sheet
III

Finding the dial in the sheet

The texture decides where the circle goes. Scribed, sawn, filed to the line, then the centre and foot holes.

An etched meteorite dial blank
IV

Meteorite and enamel

Meteorite sliced thin and acid-etched until the crystal reads. Enamel sifted and fired in stages — opaque for a portrait ground, transparent when the silver should show.

A figure transferred onto an etched meteorite dial
V

Transferring the figure

The image is taken from one of my paintings, reduced, transferred and sealed by hand. It sits on the material rather than over it — the ground still shows through.

Assembly work at the bench
VI

Cased, timed, signed

Indices set, hands fitted, movement regulated, caseback engraved with the name and the year. Timed over several days, then signed.

One of one

No two watches are alike

Reticulation cannot be repeated, meteorite cuts differently every time, and enamel takes the fire its own way. Even when I set out to make the same dial twice, the material refuses. Every piece leaves the bench signed, dated and singular.

I

The work is the reference

What you see here is the starting point, not the catalogue. Choose a piece as a point of departure and we move from there.

II

Designed to your specification

Case size and finish, dial material and ground, colour, hands, indices, strap, the engraving on the back — all of it is open, and all of it is decided together.

III

Yours alone

A design made for you is not made again for anyone else. If it carries a subject, a date or a name, it carries only yours.

Commission

Build a starting point

Not a checkout — a first sketch. Choose what you are drawn to, send it over, and we design the rest together. No prices here; every piece is quoted on what it takes.

{{ group.label }}
By inquiry only

Tell me what it should carry. I will tell you what the silver can do.

One piece at a time, so the list is short and the wait is honest. Write with a subject, a photograph, or only a direction.

{{ inquiryEmail }}