anOrdain: workshop identity, technical choices and evidence

A Glasgow workshop growing around dial craft

anOrdain dates its foundation to 2016 and its move to a purpose-designed factory in Glasgow’s southside to 2025. The workshop page presents design and making under one roof as an iterative relationship: ideas arise through experiments. Its team encompasses enamel specialisms, porcelain, thermal treatment, printing and product development. The new premises provide space for training and production development, from type design and cold forging to assembly and leatherwork, according to the maker.

The account locates the house’s identity in a workshop system, with the dial as a visible focus. The new factory is a dated development rather than evidence of an uninterrupted historic manufacture. Its list of crafts does not prove that every component begins there.

Evidence: Workshop

Opaque enamel and the work between firings

The enamel page describes powdered glass applied in successive layers to a metal base and fired in a kiln. Between firings, the cooled surface is checked for bubbles and inclusions; defects are removed and filled before the process continues. The final firing produces the sheen. Dial feet connect the finished object to the movement, and printing follows the enamel work. The account also credits early research by resident jeweller Adam Henderson and describes the enamellers’ subsequent refinement of the craft, placing expertise in accumulated experiment as well as repeated making.

The dial is therefore more than a coloured coating specified at the design stage. Its appearance depends on the material’s behaviour across several firings and on decisions made while examining the intermediate result. The process account explains why inspection belongs inside production, rather than only at the end. It does not quantify the current rejection rate or establish identical surfaces across watches.

Evidence: Enamel

Cartographic references becoming a type family

anOrdain identifies its type designer, Imogen, and describes old Ordnance Survey maps of the Highlands as references combining precision, handmade lettering and dense information. Model 1’s numerals draw on a high-contrast map type, with angular cuts replacing serifs; map keys and legends inform the minute track’s sans-serif. Model 2 adapts that family to the more robust character of a field watch, while the porcelain version uses outlined numerals suited to luminous infill. The account treats each design as a relative within an expanding family.

This is a specific way of connecting place and function. The cartographic source provides a design vocabulary, but the resulting numbers are shaped for the scale and spacing of a wristwatch dial. The shared family makes continuity visible without requiring each model to use identical forms. It also shows that legibility is designed alongside colour and material, rather than added afterwards.

Evidence: Typography

Printing repeatable marks on variable surfaces

The dial-printing page describes a ceramic printing plate engraved with the design, ink distributed across it and a silicone pad transferring the image to the enamel surface. The maker favours the ceramic plate for durability and print quality. It also explains that each handmade dial must be positioned individually because its shape and size can vary. Resin-based ink is cured after transfer. Thus the repeated numerals arise from a shared printing design, while their placement still requires attention to the particular object receiving them.

The combination of repeatability and adjustment is central to the finished face. A common plate keeps the graphic system consistent, but it cannot remove the variation already introduced by the enamel work. Printing consequently links a standardised design to an individually made surface.

Evidence: Dial Printing

Swiss base movements and Glasgow integration

anOrdain explicitly names La Joux-Perret G101, Sellita and ETA movements as its Swiss sources. They arrive in Glasgow for modification, regulation and assembly into watches. The page describes movement checks before assembly and notes that the additional depth of enamel sometimes requires changes to certain wheels so the hands clear the dial. It also records inspection of the dial and thermally treated hands before fitting. The house’s watchmaking identity therefore includes integration work around its distinctive dial, rather than an assertion that it designs every base calibre.

The enamel is a mechanical consideration as well as a visual one. Its depth and individual fit affect the space available for moving hands, making assembly a meeting point between dial craft and an established movement platform. The description provides a concrete account of that contribution. Supplier names remain attached to the movements, and the maker’s statements about regulation suited to a wearer remain its process claims.

Evidence: Watchmaking

Swiss blanks and colour matched in Glasgow

The hands page describes designs developed alongside the numerals, with references including vintage compasses and the shape of a hand holding a pen. The steel hands are stamped in Switzerland and arrive untreated. In the studio they are polished, then thermally treated to colours used across the dial range, including straw, purple and blue. Hour, minute and second hands are matched by eye into sets. Their fitting is adapted to the watch’s specifications and to the small differences of the enamel dial beneath them.

The account gives the hand a divided production history: form originates in the house’s design work, stamping takes place with a Swiss supplier, and finishing and fitting are undertaken locally. That division is more informative than a single national label. Colour matching also makes the set, rather than an isolated hand, the unit of visual consistency.

Evidence: Hands

A clay body and glaze distinct from enamel

anOrdain’s porcelain account distinguishes a clay body with a vitreous glaze from glass-based enamel applied to metal. The prepared clay is press-moulded and dried, then glazed, fired and cooled slowly. The resulting dial is inspected and finished to the required flatness before printing. The maker describes shrinkage, warping and surface defects as difficulties during firing, so successful surfaces retain some variation. The account also names different glaze ingredients as a way of producing colour, making the material itself part of the design rather than merely its support.

The distinction changes what an apparently similar watch face represents. Enamel and porcelain can both involve glassy surfaces and kilns, but they begin with different structures and undergo different production problems. Interchanging their names would erase that technical identity. The described inspection stages explain the maker’s attention to flatness and finish; they do not prove permanence under every exposure or establish that a handmade result cannot be approximated by any industrial process.

Evidence: Porcelain

Rachel Duckhouse and the decorated A1 movement

The May 2025 A1 article names Lewis Heath as anOrdain’s founder and follows artist Rachel Duckhouse’s collaboration with the house. A watch movement and books supplied material for her study; spirals, layering and the mainspring informed the resulting drawings. The project used lasers, CNC and multi-layer galvanic processes while preserving the character of her drawn lines. The article states that A1, a decorated La Joux-Perret G101, is made entirely by partners in Switzerland and offered in selected models with an exhibition back.

The collaboration extends the house’s design language to the reverse while retaining the underlying movement’s identity. Its decoration has distinct authorship and production partners; the new pattern does not imply a newly designed base calibre.

Evidence: The anOrdain A1: Decorating La Joux-Perret’s G101 Movement

A warped dial becoming a repeatable gradient

The 2022 fumé retrospective traces the gradient dial to experiments with silver in 2017. Heat caused the metal to dome; sanding the enamel flat left a different thickness across the surface, producing the shaded effect. Repeating that attractive accident proved difficult because the back still needed to fit the movement. The account describes help from the Struthers in finding a Birmingham toolmaker able to produce accurately stamped blanks. It also presents warpage and the response of different colours as continuing production challenges at the time of writing.

The narrative is a useful example of invention moving from observation to repeatability. A pleasing failed sample was only the beginning: the dial still had to satisfy geometrical requirements as part of a watch. Toolmaking and accumulated handling experience enter the story alongside the initial discovery. The dated article supports that development account, but its reported rejection experience is not treated as a current factory yield.

Evidence: The happy accident of the fumé dial

Model 3 Method and a texture translated across materials

Model 3 Method begins with a block of ash carved by Method Studio. anOrdain describes scanning the texture in three dimensions, translating it into a CAD model and engraving a die to stamp individual silver blanks. Enamel is then applied and fired over that surface. The selected Lichen card specifies an automatic Sellita SW300, a 39-millimetre steel case and thermally treated hands. The sample brings together an external cabinet-making contribution, digital translation, metal forming, enamel and an established Swiss movement within one watch.

The texture’s route gives the dial a specific material history. It is not wood sealed inside the watch; the carved relief becomes information used to shape another material. Nor is the use of scanning incompatible with subsequent hand work: each stage supplies something different to the result.

Evidence: Model 3 Method Lichen

Reader exercise: separating identity from evidence

On paper, choose two sections and write one question that each can answer. Then write a question that would require a different kind of record. Separate a named contributor, an activity, a date and a product configuration into four columns. Compare the columns without operating or opening a watch. Finish by stating which uncertainty remains and what evidence could resolve it; leave the answer open when the selected record cannot supply it.

Original editorial observation or reading prompt.