People

Based in Glasgow’s Templeton Building, our multidisciplinary team of designers and makers oversee all elements of our watches, from design, to manufacture and assembly.



Manufacturing

The founding idea behind anOrdain is that designing and manufacturing should be intertwined under one roof. Some of our best ideas come from trying one thing and discovering another, and the loop between designing and making is at the very heart of who we are.




Opaque enamel

After trialling over 160 varieties, our journey began with five opaque enamels...

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Fumé enamel

Defined by its gradient from a vibrant centre to a smoky outer rim, our...

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Hands

Designed and finished in-house, our skeletal syringe handsets move elegantly...

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Assembly, regulating & servicing

We hand-assemble and individually regulate every anOrdain watch and...

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Design

We’d argue that what makes anOrdain special is our team’s diverse mixture of skills and talents, and our collaborative approach to design. Of our 15-strong team, eight are trained designers, and we engage each person’s discipline to design, prototype and manufacture in-house.






Initial design concepts rarely survive for long; new ideas, often stemming from experiments or accidents in the workshop, draw each project in fresh directions. A completed watch represents a coming together of many different ideas, creative backgrounds and areas of manufacturing knowledge.








  • History

    The idea for a watch company that could fuse contemporary design with traditional craft first occurred to Lewis many years ago, while he was visiting Loch an Ordain, a remote lochan in the Scottish Highlands.

  • Some years later in 2015, he founded the company with a team of two: Imogen, our typographer, and Adam, our first enameller. Years of research work and design experiments first bore fruit in 2018, when we launched the Model 1, which took inspiration from cartographic maps of the area around Loch an Ordain. The watch quickly sold out its run of 260 pieces.

  • In 2019 we launched the rugged Model 2, our take on the traditional field watch, in a variety of versions. In 2020, we revisit the Model 1 with a new interpretation of our original idea. Since we started, we’re proud to say that our initial concept has blossomed into a brand and creative practice with a worldwide following, drawing on the skills and shared values found within Glasgow’s flourishing community of designers and makers.

  • Today, our expanding team of skilled designers and makers, work together to explore new creative territories. Our home and studio is comprised of three distinct spaces created specifically for watchmaking, enamelling and design, housed in the Templeton Building on Glasgow Green. Originally built as a carpet factory that employed graduates from Glasgow’s renowned art school, anOrdain operates in much the same way: drawing on local talent to design and manufacture in Scotland.