29 JUN 2020 I’m Crispin Jones, I was born and lived more or less all my life in London. I am the founder and director of Mr. Jones Watches, a small British watch brand that creates watches that display the time in unusual ways. We’ve been running for 12 years now, and we do all the printing and assembly of our watches right here in London.

Covid-19 has been a challenge for us, as for many small creative practices. During the hard-lockdown most of the staff worked from home. We divided up the tools and components, so they could continue with their work.

For the printing we use a lot of specialised equipment, which can’t be moved so easily, so the two print technicians moved their days around so that there was no overlap between them and each could come in and print on their own.

We had to shut down our shop in the Oxo Tower, which is where we sent orders out from. Now we've brought this into the same building where we do the print and assembly—luckily there was a free unit that we could take on.

On the communication side, we’ve used the time to create a new podcast with interviews with a lot of our regular collaborators.

In the past couple of weeks we’ve gotten back to more or less everyone working from the regular workspace. I think everyone is enjoying being around people, rather than working in isolation. The only real change is that everyone sits further apart, and we practice a lot of hand sanitising and wiping down of shared equipment.

We postponed several of our planned new releases, as we didn’t feel it was appropriate to be releasing new watches when so many peoples’ lives were turned upside down. We produced a special new design in response to Covid-19, where the hour and minute hands make up the phrase, “All this will pass.”

Our small way of reminding people that even in the most difficult moments, there’s always a reason to hope for the future. We decided to donate 10% of the sale price of each watch to the World Health Organisation fund to fight Covid-19.

The Black Lives Matter movement has led to a deep reflection both personally and within the company about the level privilege we operate with and, to be honest, our level of complacency. We are now actively planning to diversify our pool of collaborators and try in our own small way to affect a change.

Honestly I found quarantine okay—I’m lucky enough to live in a home with a garden and I don’t have children that needed to be educated. I wouldn’t dream of giving tips to other people! For me it was nice to have a moment to pause and reflect on what’s important about the business and the projects that we do, away from the everyday pressure of running the business.

Our sausage dog, Stanley, was a constant source of joy—for him, every day we were all at home together was a wonderful one!

I think the willingness of people to mobilise and help others was really inspiring—projects that spring up to sew PPE gowns to make up for shortfalls in hospitals and clinics; people delivering groceries to the vulnerable. I think a time of crisis, while being frightening and disruptive, also shows people in their best light: all working together for a common purpose.

I’ve also been really impressed with the way that many small businesses, local to where I live in Honor Oak, have adapted. There’s an Italian Restaurant near us called La Querce that has become a deli during lockdown. Initially they were just selling basics like eggs and flour, but week by week they’ve adapted and created new things—most recently they started producing a range of ice creams in amazing flavours! I find their ability to adapt and their refusal to be cowed by the situation hugely inspiring.

Herne Hill Velodrome reopening! I’ve been an avid track cyclist for many years and I’m really missing the camaraderie and simple pleasure of racing bikes at the track.

We’d be very happy if people wanted to have a look at our watches on MrJonesWatches.com.

We also always enjoy hearing people’s thoughts, comments or just greetings via all the usual social media channels.