One to Watch: Meet HSNY’s Promising Young Scholarship Recipients

By Nora Taylor

Watchmaking is quietly facing a generational crisis. There are simply not enough young watchmakers to replace the current generation of tinkerers and crafters after they retire. And as anyone who has patiently waited for their repaired watch to return to its rightful place on their wrist knows, that’s not great news.

Fortunately, the Horological Society of New York is doing something about it. The organization started offering monetary support to individuals and educational institutions in 2017, and this year added two new scholarship categories: The Benjamin Banneker Scholarship for Black watchmakers and the Oscar Waldan scholarship for Jewish watchmakers, which joined the existing Henry B. Fried scholarship.

The new scholarships are designed to ensure that not only are there enough watchmakers for the future, but that they bring diverse backgrounds and perspectives into the field. “I think that this is important in watchmaking for the same reason it’s important everywhere.” says John Teifert, the HSNY president. “If you come and visit the shop where I work, you’ll find watchmakers in their thirties, in their forties, in their fifties, early sixties in their seventies who speak all kinds of different languages. And that’s the big advantage working in a shop like this, where you can learn from other watchmakers’ experience.”

We sat down with the three promising watchmakers to hear about their plans.

Antonio Ledbetter – Benjamin Banneker Scholarship

Origin Story

Antonio Ledbetter calls us from a leafy trail on the campus of Paris Junior College. The New Bern, South Carolina native only recently relocated to Texas to begin his horological education. Around this time last year, Ledbetter was living in his car with his dog and got into a tragic car accident that left him with little more than his watch. “I’m mulling over what happened and all I can hear is just the watch tick-ticking this little life away,” Ledbetter says. “And I looked at it for a moment and thought, ‘Oh, I wonder what’s powering that?’ I just got watchmaking dropped on me and thought, ‘That looks promising.’”

He researched different programs and found a mentor in Paris instructor Stanley McMahan, who convinced Ledbetter he was on the right track. “He wanted to help me every way possible that he could. He was just exuberant,” Ledbetter says of his mentor. “He’s been doing this for like 30, 40 …read more