About Geoffrey Roth
Beginning
As a teenager living in upstate New York, Geoffrey Roth was introduced to fine handcrafted art through craft fairs in the Northeast in the 1960's. At these popular events handcrafted goods by skilled artisans were viewed as functional art. It was the beginning of an arts and crafts movement and a resurgence in the appreciation for all things handmade.
From that early influence, Geoffrey spent a summer making beautiful wooden boxes out of exotic Brazilian rosewood. That love of the creative process and appreciation for the finest materials would grow and shape his life.
Another driving force in Geoffrey's creative life was his fascination with exquisite machinery – how it was created and how it worked. Inheriting his father and grandfather’s love of beautifully designed sports cars, Geoffrey also became fascinated with the workings of finely tooled firearms, bicycles and timepieces. His maturing love of precision- engineered products began to catalyze his desire to create and reach for perfection.
When his post-college stint in the service was almost over, Geoffrey headed to Sedona, Arizona to visit his grandfather who owned Crescent Moon Ranch at the base of famous Cathedral Rock. That visit was pivotal: “The day I got out of the service I moved to Sedona. I always liked the wide open spaces, the freedom and particularly the beauty of Sedona."
As Sedona grew in the 70's and 80's as a mecca for artists, Geoffrey Roth began his career as one of its finest master jewelers.
In 1973, intrigued by the development of Sedona's new Tlaquepaque Arts & Craft Village, Geoffrey, quite spontaneously and with bold, youthful confidence, decided he had to open a gallery there:
“Initially, the concept of the gallery was to represent fine American handcrafted work, whether leather, silver, gold or glass. I built myself a workbench in the gallery, and I just started creating my own jewelry… pretty much right from the beginning.”
“I’m mostly self taught, and I have always been one to just do it my own way. So I started working with silver and semi-precious stones. One day, about eight months into the business, my Mom sent me some sheet pewter to work with. I took a strip of pewter and a piece of Brazilian rosewood, and I laminated the two together and made a belt buckle for my grandfather. ”
“Exotic hardwoods are truly one of my great interests--just the beauty and the feel, the workability, the beautiful finish, how it feels when it's finished--the buckles just took off and business snowballed. This precipitated a whole line of jewelry. Although I had no intention of designing in a Western fashion, my buckles fit in with the Western movement at the time, and the business began to prosper.
Today
Thirty years later, Geoffrey Roth’s custom jewelry masterfully reflects his lifelong love and appreciation for precision engineering and exquisite design: contemporary, clean, solid, timeless – and, as Geoffrey says, “From the heart.”
Through a natural evolution and exploration as an artist, Geoffrey also embarked on an improbable and bold journey: the creation of a line of exquisite signature wristwatches.
In his enthusiastic words: “Truly some of the most exciting times in my life are when I get an idea – like the watch! I get so fired up, I get so excited that I almost can’t stand it, because I know what I want to do, and I know I can get there. I just know I can make it happen.”
His dream to fuse together tradition, artistry, precision engineering and innovative design describes his version of the wristwatch: “The epitome of personal mechanical instruments.”
What began as focused determination five years ago, has now culminated in Sedona Watch Works. Geoffrey designs all the components of the watch, machines the cases using finely-calibrated machinery, and finishes, assembles and tests his watches in his Sedona studio.
