WOMAN WATCHMAKER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 73, Issue 460, 29 December 1930, Page 11

WOMAN WATCHMAKER

One by one the various crafts looked upon as belonging to men alone are yielding to conquest by women, and now in Melbourne there is a woman watchmaker, states an Australian paper. It seems surprising that watchmaking, which requires such delicacy of touch, should not have been taken up before by women, but it has remained for a young girl, Miss Ethel Tulloch, to pioneer this craft. “It is not a trade,” she explained,

“but an art. I was always very interested in anything mechanical, and some years ago, . hen I was assistant to a watchmaker at Sale, my native town, I developed a keen desire to learn watchmaking. The idea fascinated me, and I made up my mind it should become my profession.’’ Miss Tulloch came to Melbourne and was apprenticed to an Austrian watchmaker. She served the full apprenticeship of five years, and then returned to Sale, where she set up in business on her own. After eighteen months, however, she succumbed to the lure of Melbourne, and for the past year she has had her own little workshop at 323 Bourke Street. She has not. only won tho reputation of being Melbourne’s only woman watchmaker, but of being a competent craftswoman. “There arc two or three other women,” she said, “who clean watches, but that is as far as their work extends. I began with simple jobs, learning the parts, making them, and cleaning. Anyone can learn to clean a watch in a fortnight, but one is continually learning in watchmaking, as always there seems to bo something news.” Miss Tulloch is a great believer

thoroughness, and strongly disapproves of “botched” work. All her work is guaranteed for twelve months. She will always readily explain the mechanism of a watch or clock, and the nature of the repairs, >o that her customers go away quite satisfied.