Frett & Co Clockworks
Frett & Co. Clockworks was founded in March 2020 in Little Rock, Arkansas, by Kylie and Brendan Frett. Brendan, a scientist by profession, found his way into horology after inheriting his great-great-grandfather's 1880 Waltham pocket watch, a discovery that led him into pocket-watch conversions and the building of marriage watches; Kylie brings a background in art history and nearly a decade in marketing and brand strategy, running operations and growth so Brendan can focus on the bench. Every watch is personally handcrafted on-site by Brendan himself.
The house specialises in small-batch conversions of vintage American pocket watches — principally Elgin, Waltham, Hamilton, Illinois, Rockford, South Bend, Ball, and Burlington, the great railroad-grade manufacturers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries — rebuilt into wearable wristwatches. Each movement is fully disassembled, inspected, and serviced to run as it did when new, and many pieces are finished with a see-through caseback that puts the refinished movement itself on display.
The signature technique is thermal colouring, a traditional heat-bluing process Brendan performs entirely by hand over an open flame, using brass shavings rather than quenching to control the heat and working extremely slowly for precision. No finishing oil is applied afterward, preserving the raw oxide layer produced by the heat itself; colours range from light yellow at around 410°F up to a deep blue near 570°F, with plum and violet tones achievable at intermediate temperatures. Crucially, the process is reversible — the original metal can always be restored — which matters to collectors for whom a watch's historical integrity is part of its value.
Every watch that passes through the shop is a unique, individually dated conversion of a specific historic grade, spanning the 1890s through the 1950s, offered in 36mm, 40mm, and 44mm cases with an optional Heritage Bronze finish. Dials range from porcelain-enamel and guilloché to gilt and multichromatic finishes, several drawn from small-town American jewellers' own private-label railroad watches. Prices run from roughly 1,800 to 5,700 dollars, and the great majority of past pieces are already sold — a fair reflection of just how genuinely one-of-a-kind each conversion is.