I watched a video about Gruebel Forsey. They hand-make everything in their (undeniably beautiful and incredibly well-made) watches, including the screws.

And I was thinking, yeah, that's great, but the only reason for hand-making a screw is so that you can say that the screw is hand-made. It will absolutely be objectively and measurably inferior, in all aspects, to a modern CNC-made screw, whether it's two or twenty millimetres in size. It's a fastener, at the end of the day.

This leads to a Gruebel Forsey watch costing the thick end of £150,000. Sure, it's beautiful, and sure, the finish is beyond compare, and sure, it's certainly going to be mechanically and horologically innovative in some ways, but I can't help wanting to get hold of them and yell "stop wasting time, effort and money making screws by hand! It's like hand-cranking a windmill on your roof, just so you can say you've got hand-made artisan electricity!"

There's a more philosophical point here, too. I think that these watches represent the pinnacle of skill. Craftsmanship. Now, a talented friend of mine explained her view of the difference between a draughtsman and an artist thus: both have skills with their drawing materials, and skills can be both taught and learned. An artist has artistic talent (however you choose to define it), and while that can be nurtured, basically you've either got it or you haven't.

Are watchmakers artists? Or are they hyper-skilled craftsmen?