Draft:Derek Pratt (watchmaker)

Derek Francis Pratt FBHI (9 May 1938 – 16 September 2009), known as Derek Pratt, was an English horologist and watchmaker seen by colleagues and collectors as one of the twentieth century’s most talented watchmakers. He was notable for the work he did under the Urban Jürgensen Sønner name, his Oval watch, and the re-creation of John Harrison's H4 timekeeper.

Early life

Derek Pratt, born in Kent, had a lifelong fascination with all things mechanical. He knew from a very young age that he wanted to be a watchmaker. His childhood nickname, coined by his cousins, was Ticker. He attended Beckenham Technical School, and in 1956, went to the National College of Horology. The three-year course was supposed to culminate in finishing and assembling a pocket watch, but the syllabus was suddenly changed, due to a slump in the British watch industry. Pratt, deeply disappointed, left immediately, without graduating.

Soon after, the former director of Horology at the College, Andrew Fell, who had witnessed Pratt's talent, hired him. Together, they worked on clocks inside black boxes used in aviation as well as micro-soldering devices for the then burgeoning field of microelectronics. It was this work that took Pratt to Switzerland, where he was to spend the rest of this life, and to embark on his career as a watchmaker.

Career

After his work at Andrew Fell's company Felmada ended in the early 1960s, Pratt took jobs at small companies specializing in microelectronics. One of them was Kulicke & Soffa (NASDAQ: KLIC), a semiconductor manufacturer. In 1972, Pratt went on his own, specializing in watch and clock restoration and development. He was particularly drawn to Gothic iron clocks // Liechti // add

When the Quartz crisis hit the Swiss watchmaking industry, Pratt seized the opportunity to acquire tools of the trade, expanding his workshop with lathes, guilloché machines, etc. His focus was on hand making watches from scratch, and continuing restoration.

A commission to repair a watch for the Swiss entrepreneur and antique watch dealer Peter Baumberger (1939 – 2010) led to friendship and a business partnership.

Consulting and Collaborations

The Urban Jürgensen years

In 1979, Baumberger bought the rights to the 18^th century Danish brand name Urban Jürgensen und Sønner (UJS), and in 1985, he acquired the company. He brought Pratt on board as a consultant and technical director. Dr Helmut Crott noted in 2011 that likely “only his association with Derek gave Peter the confidence to finalize the deal. Derek was almost certainly the key factor in the acquisition of UJS; his extraordinary skills were needed for the 90 historic movements to be finished, cased and sold.” [LINK to book, page 25] Pratt’s involvement with USJ was pivotal to the brand’s revival and success with collectors in the 1980s and 1990s.

Pratt's creative output was intense in the 1980s and 1990s.....

Collaboration with George Daniels for Omega

While working for the Urban Jürgensen brand, Pratt was developing other ideas and in constant exchange with his friend and peer George Daniels. The two of them loved collaborating and exchanging ideas. They were in the habit of lengthy telephone calls every Sunday. on add here the coaxial escapement entry after it has been edited

Inspiration and Heroes

Pratt's biggest heroes in horology were John Harrison (1693 – 1776), John Arnold (1736 – 1799), Abraham-Louis Breguet (1747 – 1823) and Professor Alfred Helwig (1886-1974). Would it be a stretch to say that Derek Pratt and George Daniels' friendship was comparable to that that of Arnold and Breguet?

Notable Works

Pocket Watches

• 1981 Tourbillon pocket watch for Urban Jürgensen Sønner
• 1981 Remontoire Tourbillon pocket watch for Urban Jürgensen Sønner
• early 1990s ....
• Oval Watch Pratt began working on The Oval, as he called it, in 1982
• 1997 Double-wheel Remontoire Tourbillon, a watch Pratt made under his own named submitted to a contest to mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of Abraham-Louis Breguet.

Replica of H4

Pratt had always greatly admired John Harrison, the 18^th century carpenter and horologist who invented the marine chronometer. In the 1990s, Pratt decided to re-create Harrison’s H4 [link to RMG], the timekeeper that Harrison completed in 1759 and won him the Longitude Prize.

Pratt started work on “his H4” in 1997. He worked on it for the next 12 years, researching, planning and making the various parts. Harrison’s masterpiece H4 is located at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London, and was at the time under the auspices of the MoD (Ministry of Defence) Art Collection. Thanks to the museum’s Senior Horology Conservator Jonathan Betts, it was possible for Pratt to gather information needed for this ambitious undertaking. His exhaustive research was kept in over a dozen ring binders.

[Ownership of the Ministry of Defence Art Collection was transferred to museums and public bodies in 2017.LINK]

In 2009, much of the work on the movement was done, and Pratt had commissioned other craftsmen for parts such as the case (Martin Matthews) and the engraving (Jos Houbraken). But with Pratt's health in decline, he got watchmakers of Charles Frodsham & Co, Roger Stevenson and Philip Whyte, to take over. They completed the watch in 2014.

The replica was exhibited as a loan alongside John Harrison’s original H4 in the exhibition Ships, Clocks & Stars: The Quest for Longitude, first shown at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England, in 2014, and subsequently, at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, The Museum of America and the Sea, in Mystic Seaport, CT, and The Australian National Maritime Museum, in Sydney, Australia.

Water Clocks

• 1995, Water Clock for Pratt’s childhood friend Derek Goldsmith
• 2000, Water Clock Luterbach (Switzerland), in celebration of the municipality's 950-year anniversary
• 2004, Water Clock Langendorf (Switzerland), in celebration of the municipality's 700-year anniversary

Wrist Watches

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Personal Life

Derek Pratt was married to the Swiss Franziska Hess from 1965 to 1985. They had two daughters, Caroline Anne, and Mary Louise. In 1988, Pratt married a fellow Brit, Jenny Haller. She survives him, along with his daughters; his sister, Sheila; and his grandson, Noah.

Personal Interests

In addition to horology heroes, Pratt also admired outliers in mechanical inventions: Franz Reuleaux, the inventor after whom the curved triangle is named. He drove a first-generation Mazda RX-7, a sportscar with a Wankel engine based on the Reuleaux triangle. The Reuleaux triangle also made an appearance in his remontoire tourbillon pocket watch. Pratt was an avid cyclist – he reckoned the bicycle was mankind’s finest invention – and collected bicycles. His favorite was a Dursley Pedersen, an early 19^th century bicycle known for its hammock-style saddle, but he also owned two Penny-farthings, a Swiss Army bike, and many others. Some of his other passions encompass aviation, putt-putt boats, nature and music.

Switzerland

Though he chose Switzerland as his home in 1965, his ties to the U.K. were strong until the end of his life. While he chose never to become a Swiss citizen, he cherished his life in a small village near Solothurn, where he frequented the weekly farmers market every Saturday. He spoke Swiss German and was also fluent in French. He was entrusted with the maintenance of Solothurn’s 16th century astronomical clock at the Roter Turm aka Zeitglockenturm , a civic duty he happily took on.

England [flesh out]

Pratt took multiple trips to England every year, often in his Mazda RX-7, to visit family and friends, many from early childhood days, and for professional exchanges. For a while, had a second home in a small town in Kent.

Death

At the age of 71, Derek Pratt passed away on 16 September 2009. The cause of death was prostate cancer.

Awards

• 1992, British Horological Institute Silver Medal, for the “Restoration and construction of precision and complicated mechanical watches”
• 1999, Prix Gaïa, for “for his specialization in the repair of iron clocks and complicated watches as well as in the design of complicated pieces.”
• 2005, Tompion Medal, for “outstanding contributions to horology; a top class watch and clock maker; his ingenuity, technical ability and curiosity have helped to solve a variety of prototype and production problems; a supreme artist-craftsman”

Exhibitions

Pratt’s replica of John Harrison’s H4 timepiece was shown alongside the original at the 2014 exhibition Ships, Clocks & Stars: The Quest for Longitude, at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England, presenting an account of why longitude was so important some 300 years ago. The exhibition subsequently travelled to the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC; The Museum of America and the Sea, in Mystic Seaport, CT; and The Australian National Maritime Museum, in Sydney, Australia.

Publications

Pratt published countless articles in the British Horological Journal. add

Documentary film

The two-part documentary A detailed study of H4 , directed and produced by Barbara Darby, gives insight into Pratt’s journey in the reconstruction of John Harrison’s Longitude timekeeper H4, including his collaboration and commissioning other craftsmen for parts such as the case (Martin Matthews) and the dial (Jos Houbraken), and subsequently, Charles Frodsham's completion of the watch.