From inherited tools
to inherited patience.
My grandfather repaired horse tack in a village outside Timișoara. When he died, his bench came to me — a slab of beech, three drawers of awls and irons, a half-finished bridle in a vice. I didn't know what to do with it. I was working in a software company at the time, writing code I did not love, in a city that did not love me back.
For a year the bench sat in my apartment, unused, accusing. Then one evening I unrolled a piece of leather a friend had given me, sharpened a knife on a wet stone, and cut a strap for my own watch. It took eleven hours. It was not good.
"The strap is the only part of a watch you actually touch. Treat it that way."
I made one more. Then twenty more. The twenty-first was good enough to keep. Friends began to ask. Strangers began to ask. In 2019 I quit the software job, painted "Yamin" on the door of a workshop on Strada Lipovei, and started taking orders.
I still work alone, at the same beech bench. I still take three weeks per strap. I still tie every knot inside the leather where no one can see it. I believe in slow things, and I believe a wristwatch should be one of them.
— Yamin