Was The ‘California Dial’ The First Custom Rolex?
1970’s L.A. was flipping it before Bamford was Bamford.
These days, it’s a whole subsection of watch collecting. Just like how Brabus customizes Benzes and RUF customizes Porsches, there’s a type of wearer that buys a Swiss watch and immediately changes its look to make it unique. So what was the first custom Rolex? A lot of people say they were made by a man named Kirk Rich. (What a name for a custom Rolex creator, right?) In short, Mr. Rich worked at a watch shop in Victorville, California in the early 70's.
This wasn’t just any watch shop; it was a shop run by his father and started by his grandfather in 1924. Mr. Rich grew up surrounded by Rolexes and Cartiers in various states of repair and disrepair, and it wasn’t long before he too was in the game of fixing high-end Swiss timepieces. What made Mr. Rich’s business different from most others was that they specialized in repainting and refinishing watch dials. Of course, when one mentions ‘repainting’ and ‘refinishing,’ some watch collectors begin to make sad and angry faces.
In earlier times, watches were simply tools. If the luminous paint began to wear out and not glow anymore, it made sense to take the watch somewhere and have it re-done. If the dial began to fade, it made sense to get it repainted. Of course, this was where the first bits of creativity and customization began to take place. Pretty much as soon as watches were invented, third-party watchmakers started painting second-hands red, changing the colour of watch face numerals, and even doing things like swapping out dials.
Let’s take a break from this story for a minute and imagine Los Angeles in the 1970's. This was during a period where New York was in decline, but L.A. seemed to grow every year; both in population and cultural relevancy. How else to explain the ever-growing thick smog that blanketed the Hollywood Hills every morning? Rock stars and authors followed the movie stars out West. Record companies and publishers opened West Coast offices or outright moved their headquarters to the new hub of creative work in the Western Hemisphere.
The first American discotheque was not Studio 54 or the Paradise Garage in New York; it was the Whisky A Go Go in L.A., which opened in the mid-sixties and had DJ’s playing records while a lady danced in a suspended birdcage above the crowd. Yes, this is why this type of entertainment is called ‘Go-Go’ dancing. The most famous rock-and-roll stars rented or bought homes in L.A.’s Laurel Canyon, or commanded whole floors in Sunset Strip hotels in order to have raucous parties. Even British bands at the upper echelon of the industry at the time (like Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones) usually preferred to party in L.A., not New York or London.
Out in the streets, L.A. again compared to London or New York was more about customization and being unique. Black and Latinx culture tended to flip and ‘go against the grain’ of what mainstream America and Europe wanted to do, and this heavily influenced the many countercultures in Los Angeles at the time. On the roads, L.A. mechanics and customizers were taking 50’s, 60’s and 70’s vehicles and re-painting them in bright, ‘candy’ colors. They would then replace the wheels and adjust the suspension of the cars, turning them into what we now call ‘low-riders.’ This was of course a continuation of the 1950’s ‘Kustom Kulture,’ the process of turning old sedans and coupes into wild ‘hot rods.’
So it was in front of this backdrop that Kirk Rich worked on old watches in Victorville, part of the ever-growing ‘Inland Empire’ just over the hills from the Pacific Ocean. Mr. Rich was no purist, just as ready to customize a watch for a customer as he was to clean up an old Rolex and get it back into service. One of the first big vintage watch trends concerned the Rolex ‘Bubble Back,’ so named for the bulbous rear cases of the 1930s and ’40s Rollies that concealed the brand’s first-ever automatic movements.
Out of all the ‘Bubble-Backs,’ the most coveted dial layout and font style was what was originally called the ‘Error-Proof’ dial. This was a dial layout that was half-Arabic and half-Roman numerals, conceived to create added legibility under water and in the dark. In effect, these Rolexes were some of the first real sports watches. Timing bezels didn’t exist yet, so Rolex was looking for an innovative way for divers and soldiers to know the exact time of operations. Rolex applied for and was granted a patent on this type of dial in the mid-1940s, and some of the first Panerais (built by Rolex) featured this layout.
There was one problem; there weren’t many ‘Error-Proof’ Rolex watches to begin with, as it was a rather bold style. Many Rolex buyers at the time preferred the more-elegant stick or arrow markers on their watch dials. The Melrose Avenue vintage and secondhand clothing scene took off in the 70’s, and with it came watch shops that also sold unique and antique pieces from bygone eras. It was these shops that began to order custom dials from Mr. Rich out in Victorville. Not unlike the custom-car scene, many customers also asked that the dials be repainted in bright red or yellow colorways.
The psychedelic rock of the 60’s was supplanted by the disco of the 70’s, and Mr. Rich began to do a very brisk business.
What was popular in California also became popular in Japan, and the small diameters of ‘Bubble-Backs’ also didn’t hurt their popularity as small watches have always been more popular in that part of the world. Even today, the largest concentration of these types of watches is in Japan, China, and Hong Kong. As collectors in the late 70’s and early 80’s began to snap up what was once a more regional and fashion-driven phenomenon, people began calling these ‘Error-Proof’ dials ‘California Dials.’
As one might imagine, this nickname was originally a bit of a put-down, as it implied (correctly in many cases) that the dial was not in original condition. Especially today (as even a modded dial might have thirty or so years of patina on the piece) it is very hard to distinguish an original ‘California Dial’ from one customized by Mr. Rich or someone else.
Not unlike in many other facets of life, it was the West Coast of the U.S. (and of course early-adopting fashionistas in Japan) that led the way in creative trends that were later accepted around the world. It was also this way concerning what might be the first ‘Custom Rolexes,’ the so-called ‘California Dials’ popularized and handmade by Kirk Rich.
