Stopping in time
After 50 years as a watch repairer, Keith Steinhardt has decided to stop.
He hasn't stopped because he is run down. At 76 years of age, his eyes and his hands still work with precision.
Keith Steinhardt is retiring because, for the first time since 1948, he has stopped enjoying his job. And the reason is that watches can no longer be repaired.
"Years ago when a person turned 21, he received a watch, and he had it for the next 50 years. But today that's finished ... they're not made to last that long."
According to Steinhardt, most watchmaking companies - including better known brands like Rolex - won't supply parts after 15 or 20 years. And if they do, they make parts so expensive that it is not economical to repair them any more.
The timepiece - perhaps the most durable icon of craftsmanship in this society - has ceased to be timeless.
As if to mark the point, a mantelpiece clock on the shelf of Steinhardt's Chapel street store winds into action and chimes four clear notes that signal the quarter hour.
Steinhardt has worked in the same shop for 50 years- longer than any other shopkeeper. He has kept time on Chapel street.
The busiest time for business was in the fifties and sixties. Steinhardt says Chapel street was popular then because it was a good quality, well priced shopping centre. "The trendiness only came up in the last ten years or so with the youngsters all running around..."
While he has been in his shop, Chapel street has become more "like a middle eastern market" with haggling and goods all over the footpath, Steinhardt says. And it has swapped ends. In the fifties and sixties, the Toorak road end was full of low class stores and pawn shops. But there were six quality watchmakers between High Street and Dandenong Road.
Today there is one. And in September, when Steinhardt closes his doors for the last time, there will be none.
The 40 year old clock on the mantelpiece chimes its quarterly melody again. A,E,F,D.
Steinhardt's opening hours did not change for 47 years. Eight to five; nine pm Fridays and nine to twelve on Saturdays. In the last few years he has shut up shortly before five on quiet days and he is closed on Saturdays.
For a decade his has been one of the last inner city stores owned and staffed by one person.
He has been married for 49 years. His wife has wanted him to retire for a while. (A year after he retires she will have been his wife for longer than he has worked.)
"My wife [has] been on my back and said - it's time to retire . But I quite enjoyed it. I quite enjoyed coming to work..."
She helped in the shop three or four days a week, for 30 years. As the interview goes longer than expected, she rings up to see how long he will be.
The clock on the shelf that was part of the last renovations in 1965, sounds the arrival of the last quarter hour.
In the fifties, Steinhardt sold and repaired gold and steel mechanical watches with rubies inside of them. By the sixties, electronic watches with synthetic jewels were standard. In the seventies, quartz revolutionised the mechanism that drove the hand. And finally, like so many objects in the eighties, watches went digital.
Steinhardt knows that wind-up, mechanical watches last the longest. If his word is not enough, he has a watch made in 1802 that keeps perfect time right to this minute.
Until recently, he enjoyed working every week. With pride he produces a 1972 letter from the International Watch Company, Schauffhausen, Switzerland, which recommends him as the best repairer in Melbourne.
"It was really a pleasure in those days to sell a good quality watch. People appreciated it... Today people purchase what they see advertised."
Will things change?
"I don't think things will change. Not in my lifetime. Maybe in yours."
The clock on the mantelpiece reaches the hour.
© Copyright Andrew Bock 2010. All rights protected.