Profile
Lauriance Gerthoffer-Ham
As we go through life, there are but a very few people we might be lucky enough to meet—should we open our eyes for them—who leave a lasting impression on us. Who have a profound impact on how we see life, by which magical way we decide to navigate through it, and who prompt us to question the contributions we make to this big mystery. And surprisingly, these people are not family members, nor friends, partners or colleagues, but humans who don’t fit within the traditional categories in which we place the people we meet. It could be a chance encounter we make on a plane, someone we sit next to whom we’re going to chat with for a few hours and never see again. It could be someone we run into at a bus stop on holiday and with whom we have a brief but meaningful conversation about life. Or, as it relates to our niche world of horology, another person bitten by the watch bug who works for a brand, creates content, or simply collects these incredible machines, whom we instantly click with without knowing why at first. And this could be for one of many reasons.
Without trying to generalize the industry too much, and speaking only from my own experience of it, there are many great people who I get to chat and work with on a regular basis. But also a great many who are far from being amicable, professional, or even decent. They seek immediate fame by putting their faces on as many frames as they can. They thrive making social media headlines for saying bold and rude things to others. They strive to become recognized on the street, to be the best at that particular thing they do, and inevitable to anyone who tries to get anything done in horology. These folks speak before they think, throw subtle back-ended comments at those who do better than them (or do something they haven’t thought of,) and won’t hesitate to throw you under the bus if it were to serve their greatest purpose. To speak frankly, there are many bad people in horology, as they are anywhere else, and even though the good ones exist, the exceptional ones are rare.
Looping this back to the beginning, we might be able to come across that one person who matters. Not only to us, but the industry as a whole, for they demonstrate a singular noble approach to doing everything, to saying what must be said with utmost elegance, and to carry themselves with a level of professionalism a rare few of us have ever experienced in the flesh but mostly have heard of through others and good stories. This is the type of person we’re going to talk about today in our latest installment of Women in Horology, as I had the pleasure of interviewing Lauriance Gerthoffer-Ham, currently leading the marketing department of Bristol-based Fears, a brand I’m particularly found of as I’ve reviewed quite a few of its models and I’ve written about its fourth Managing Director, Nicholas Bowman-Scargill. Lauriance is that special person I met in watchmaking who has the power to make me believe that goodness exists in this world and in our niche one of horology evidently, which we must strive to find and cultivate, for she speaks truth to power in her own eloquent manner and exerts herself to be the most professional of professionals in watchmaking.
As I hope it will transpire through this article, Lauriance is one of the most thoughtful, kind, and hardworking people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting in this little corner of ours.
Lauriance Gerthoffer-Ham
From Family to Watches
While it is generally easier to tell the tale of someone’s path into horology and the work they do in it by adopting a compartmentalized approach to recounting their story, such a thing is impossible to do when speaking about Lauriance. For in order to understand what she does now and how she got to do it, what kind of watches she collects, and through which path she got into horology, we must speak broadly about her formidable pre-Fears life and the multitude of experiences she’s had in the United Kingdom and in her native South Africa. But speaking about her first horological encounters we must, as we do in every single profile story, which occurred vicariously through her parents and grandparents. Working from further out in on the generational scale, the first person who Lauriance mentioned was influential in getting her hooked was her paternal British grandfather who was legendarily dressed everyday as the most dapper of a gentleman, so much so that he would often get stopped and photographed on the street. He wore one watch, a quartz-powered Raymond Weil who started and ended his daily rituals—as putting on and taking off the watch were the first and last things he would do everyday.
As one can imagine, witnessing this spectacle left a long-lasting impression on Lauriance. Moreover, her British grandparents whom she visited on holidays, created a sort of clock museum in their own house, and Lauriance fondly remembers the hourly symphony of clocks which would chime different notes and tones all together at once; another memorable spectacle which is firmly imprinted in her memory as if it had just been recorded. Her maternal grandparents, on the other side of the cultural spectrum, herald from former Czechoslovakia and lived through the communist regime which was dismantled in 1989 by way of the Velvet Revolution. Living there and under these circumstances, as all people did, her grandparents dressed in a uniform fashion which didn’t leave many opportunities for self-expression, save for the watches they wore. During her visits to Slovakia (Lauriance was born after the Velvet Revolution,) she remembers seeing her family members wearing many Prim’s (a brand which still exists today) and another called Straka (which however no longer exists.) Moving closer to Lauriance’s generation, her parents were also much influential in getting her (more) interested in watches.
Living in South Africa, her father was a towering figure of a man who wore small elegant dress watches paired with crocodile and ostrich straps, while her mother, feminine but strong, wore watches typically too large for women and better suited for men, which she liked to sport on metal bracelets. As a child, Lauriance was fascinated by this contradiction and wondered for a long while whether it wouldn’t make more sense for her father to wear the larger sportier watches and her mother the smaller elegant ones. But she keenly observed that there is as much a diversity in horology as there are personalities and personal preferences in this world, and that there are many ways in which watches can be worn and as many stories that can be told through them. This is when, according to Lauriance, she was truly introduced to horology which she can never come back from. But before we move onto discussing her penchant for horology and how it got her to eventually work for Fears, we first must discuss her early life and careers which give us additional clues as to what makes Lauriance tick and what drove her to be the remarkable person I’ve had the pleasure of chatting with at several watch fairs.
Life and Early Professional Work
As it was hinted at before, Lauriance grew up in South Africa from which she immigrated to the United Kingdom at the age of 24 years old. Growing up, she had set her eyes on three potential careers, as varied as you could imagine them to be, which demonstrates something rather fascinating about her: Lauriance has always been on the move ever since she could walk, setting a new goal for herself should the previous one had been met or abandoned, physically and mentally incapable of standing still. Thus the first option she had thought of was to become an anthropologist because she likes to understand the operating manuals of human beings, how they see the world from a variety point of views and how the variety of their experiences shape them into unique individuals—which she had experimented with when studying the watches her parents wore. She was also interested in becoming an end-of-life nurse because it is in her DNA to help others. And third, she thought of studying classical composition (to write film scores) specializing in Venetian composition. She ended up doing a double-major in nursing and the arts which eventually brought her into marketing which is the perfect union of the two.
In other words: helping others appreciate the beauty of watches.
Lauriance was so deadset to figure out the best path forward for her life that she paid her way through university by working in an art gallery in South Africa while studying full time. She always has had many interests and has always been doing multiple things at once which are skills which have fashioned how she now leads Fears’ marketing department with immense success. (I am on the receiving end of her work, so to speak, and dealing with her has always been one of the few highlights of my professional horological career.) Moving a little bit ahead of her life’s timeline, after having moved to the United Kingdom, Lauriance found the time to co-create a suicide prevention charity focusing on men’s mental health, whilst freelancing here and there, which is rather impressive. Which brings us to indeed her move to her paternal grandparents’ land which she made at age 24 and arrived in the town of Royal Tunbridge Wells where she became a nurse in palliative care. She did want to become a nurse as we know in order to help others, but this is the kind of work which takes a toll one someone’s own mental health as well since accompanying so many people through their last moments emotionally exhausted her.
However, through her work in palliative care, which we discussed at length during the interview, she learned, as it might sound stereotypical to say, that life is indeed fleeting. And although we do have a lot of time on our hands, we do tend to waste a lot of it. She understood that we need to lean into life, as she explained, jump outside of ourselves to seize the opportunities which are presented to us, and learn to jettison the ones which create the most resistance and friction, and embrace the ones which more naturally flow into our lives. (We are both students of Stoicism and it felt so nice to speak to a kindred spirit.)
Thoughtful Watch Collecting
I am going to make you wait a little more before we speak about Lauriance and Fears. (Good things happen to those who wait, right?) Because thus far we’ve learned about her terrestrial whereabouts, the first horological experiences and key exposures to this domain she has had growing in South Africa and visiting family in the United Kingdom, and her professional aspirations and the career she eventually got into. As you might imagine, Lauriance was a watch collector before becoming a horological marketing specialist since, as we know, watches have made many cameos in her life since she was little. But what about the very first watch she had and remembers wearing? As we know, our first horological acquisition, whether or not it was gifted to us or we bought it ourselves (as Santurce Collection’s Anita del Mar Morales Cotto did,) means a lot and perhaps more than any other that have come since for it marked the beginning of something meaningful to us. Lauriance described herself as a tomboy growing up in South Africa, being the first to throw herself in the mud or play boys’ sports, which is why the perfect first watch for her was a Casio G-Shock on a burnt orange nylon strap.
Alas, Lauriance no longer has this watch which she wore for many years since the age of 8, as its career ended on a fateful day when she decided to climb a tree and smashed the G-Shock against an electric fence tumbling down the darn thing. Needless to say, the Casio was toast. Many years later, Lauriance would acquire three watches which meant something to her and which constitute her modest collection of watches as it stands today. (One never knows what could happen tomorrow.) First, she inherited her grandfather’s quartz Raymond Weil from the 1970s, which is missing a strap and has lived through so many adventures that it has been declared impossible to service by multiple watchmakers. She keeps the watch on her nightstand to remind herself of the life of the person who had it first and where she’s trying to go herself. The second significant acquisition took place when she was freelancing for Fears, and was simply cleaning the case-backs of the 200th Anniversary collection watches commemorating Edwin Fears’ birthday, when she came upon one whose serial number matching her birthdate. Money exchanged hands and Lauriance added it to her small one-watch collection now made of two.
The third and last timepiece to have made a space for itself in her watchbox is a Fears 1930 Hexagonal Cocktail watch gifted by her partner, which she described as being the most considerate gift she has ever received and one which has become her most prized possession, from an horological standpoint that is. This is a type of special watch which requires the perfect strap pairing and Lauriance has been on the hunt for the one for a while now and I hope she does find it soon so that she can sport that other Fears often. But you might be thinking that three watches is too few to have for someone whose career deals with speaking about watches on a daily basis. But as she pointed out, she’s spoiled seeing so many great timepieces at the office everyday and when perusing the aisles of the numerous watch fairs she attends in her capacity of Marketing Manager of one of Britain’s oldest and most prestigious houses of watchmaking. But she does get tempted on a regular basis but is aware that her tastes are expensive and difficult to satisfy, as she strives to find rare and unique vintage timepieces. This reality has slowed the growth of her watch collection if you will, for now at least.
Looking at Watches Through Working at Fears
Now comes the big question of how and why she got to work for Fears and what happened since she realized that working as a nurse in palliative care was just too much. Which I can only imagine was, as I’m as far from having had this kind of job as Mars is from Earth, despite the lofty dreams of tech billionaires who want to colonize it thinking that it is much closer. After working as a nurse and then in marketing for a bit, Lauriance took a well-deserved sabbatical which took her to many faraway places on the West Coast of the United States and further up in Canada. (A dream trip to many of us we must admit.) Upon returning to the UK, Lauriance started working freelance as a web and mobile developer (because why not?) which is also when she co-created the aforementioned charity. This is another moment in her life when she was reminded that some things work and others don’t, that we shouldn’t push too hard to make something function that shouldn’t, whilst freeing up our energy and focus to do something else that could. This is the mindset with which she started a new chapter of her professional life upon returning from her sabbatical, which led her to live life with looser control and a more open mind.
And that is how she met the Fears team.
Through her freelancing work she made new professional connections and met new colleagues, one of whom invited her to a Fears event during which she met Nicholas, as we know, the brand’s 4th Managing Director, and basically everybody else in the family. This is also when she met the popular YouTuber Britt Pearce (whose channel used to be called Watch Gringa) with whom she had a long and profound conversation about all things horology, which she fondly remembers as Britt had given Lauriance the space and time she needed to speak about watches, explore ideas, and share their respective experiences of the hobby. It is at this event and through her conversation with Britt that Lauriance was able to discover that she has a genuine love for horology and that she wanted to do more in the industry. After a first event she went to a second one, and saved the evening by somehow managing to find the particular batteries that operate the safe in which the watches Fears was about to present for the event were stuck for the old ones had run out of juice. To thank her, Nicholas gifted her a rose from a bouquet which she pressed and has preserved as memory of that adventurous evening ever since.
Lauriance with Britt Pearce
Over the course of several weeks and months after that, Lauriance started freelancing for Fears working on various projects, and incrementally started to do more and more and that more often, first working two days a week then full-time still as freelancer in September of 2023. At that year’s Christmas party, Lauriance and Nicholas were taking a breath of fresh air outside the event and he asked her the self-answerable question of whether or not she would like to officially join the team as a full-time employee. Evidently she would, but she thought that maybe Nicholas was being too nice or too polite and didn’t get too much of her hopes up. However, as fate would have it in store for Lauriance, a few days after the Christmas party she had lunch with Nicholas who came prepared with a comprehensive plan on what she would do for Fears—he offered her the position of leading the marketing department which she has now been doing since February of 2024. This is where we need to take a small break in the story to share one of the numerous positive impressions I’ve had of Lauriance since I met her in 2024: I was under the impression that she had this tenure for at least a decade.
This impression was generated by her impeccable professionalism and profound knowledge of Fears and the watch industry as a whole, which I naively assumed could only be the fruit of someone’s extensive experience in it. However, what I came to now understand is the fact that Lauriance has the unique capacity to fully and almost instantly immerse herself into whatever she sets her mind to, even more so that she had come to the realization that horology was the perfect avenue for her to marry a personal appreciation for watchmaking, a deep interest for the human mind, and for helping others to have positive experiences in this hobby. Thus, the most important aspect of her job is to give people the opportunity to feel the same emotions she felt when she first came upon Fears’s collections, which was the perfect blend of amazement, awe, and excitement. Three powerful emotions she gets to revisit everyday at work and which have changed the way she sees watchmaking: the team’s sheer devotion to craft tangible and profound stories around the watches before putting pen to paper, their meticulous search for the right movement or dial color, gave her a new appreciation for this art form.
The Meaning of Watches to Her
Through her first collecting experiences and working at Fears, Lauriance’s perception of timepieces went from this watch looks nice and wears nice to this timekeeping device connects me to memories of loved ones and events from the past and finally to putting together a good watch is a difficult multi-faceted process which requires time, passion, and precision. Indeed an emotion-generating art form which has now become an integral part of who she is, which she carries outward with authenticity as much as she naturally wears her heart on her sleeve, regardless of what she does, whom she does it with, and where she does it. Looking back at the G-Shock with the burnt orange strap from her South African childhood to the Fears Hexagonal Cocktail watch she received from her partner in the United Kingdom, and all of the memories of her grandparents and parents wearing unique watches in their own unique ways, it is clear that timekeeping devices have become genuine extensions of who she is and of her expressionism, as she explained. She further shared that watches are tangible objects that hallmark intangible milestones and hold meanings and memories she can go back to at any moment.
Akin to her own amulets.
Lauriance with Sophie Cassaro
Being a Women in Horology
Each new installment from the series Women in Horology concludes by approaching the question of our protagonist’s experience of being a woman in the industry. (At least, I always ask the question and most do answer it.) As she always does, Lauriance answered this question in the most eloquent of ways and simply pointed out at first that her experience has been an interesting one. The biggest conflict she has had stems from people’s confusion as to her first name which they automatically transform in their psyche as being Laurence, a man’s name which happened to be her father’s name. On email, many of her interlocutors are under the impression that they are conversing with a man. But how surprised they are when the chat moves onto a phone or video call, or even more challenging, an in-person meeting, and they cannot help but to hide their surprise at interacting with a woman. While they struggle to conceal their bewilderment, Lauriance let it ride out of her mind and proceeds to be the professional she knows to be, being considerate as to how she speaks to them and how she makes them feel, always insuring that she best represents Fears and herself, as the wonderful being she is.
Conclusion: The Proper Conduct in Life
The most important thing that jumped out from the interview (and the few times I saw Lauriance in the flesh) and which you must understand about her is this: no opportunity to do the right thing in the right way and for the right reason must be wasted, as life is short and she has the opportunity to make each moment count. Through each conversation, each email, each text, she has a chance to make a positive contribution to this world, whether it relates to her personal life, her previous careers, what she does now at Fears and more globally as a human being. Which is why she believes she has the power (and responsibility) to make people of any gender and walk of life feel better, and of course to lift the women in our niche industry up. Evidently, women have to work hard and harder than men to make it, and she works so hard to do what she must in the paths that have naturally forged themselves in front of her, that she often feels bone-tired to her core. And despite that, she keeps her head high and her shoulders square, and proceeds to do the best job she can, to be respectful and engaging, eloquent and passionate, and to find her own ways to infuse others with the same passion she has for watchmaking.
And for life in general as it happens.
Thanks for reading.