About Us
Celeste Watch is a 100% woman-owned and operated watch company in the US.
We consider ourselves watch dial artists and specialize in innovative and bespoke timepieces that are part of how we express ourselves and show up in the world. We have an inventory of 100+ designs that are available for purchase and also create custom designs by request.
How Celeste started
The process of making my first watch was slow and sometimes painful. Starting in 2013, I began taking apart old watches, making my own dials and putting them back together. After some success, my celebration was in full swing when I completed my first inlay dial. I wore it proudly and showed all my family and friends. But during a rainstorm, in a moment that changed everything, I looked down at my handcrafted creation only to discover that my watch was no longer ticking. Weather conditions had swelled the wood and were preventing the hour hand from moving. And so began my next level of training: I had to learn how to stabilize the wood on the dial, ensure the wood and shell were the same thickness, make a precision inlay, design a watch case, reliably build watches, and craft beautiful leather bands. The learning curve was steep and I had personally discovered at least fifty ways how not to make a watch dial.
Creating such an unusual piece, I knew I needed feedback so I applied to be a vendor at the Eugene Saturday Market. I was so nervous my first day! I set up my booth and only had one table. I’d worked all week to make four watches and was beyond excited to get comments about this idea for a watch that was probably unlike anything most people had seen. My booth was 8’ x 8’ with only four watches. I felt I could do gymnastics in the back and I worried that no one would be interested. But to my relief, the watches were well received and I sold two that very first weekend. I was so buoyed by the response that I went home and made another four the following week. The next Saturday I was immensely proud to have six watches on the table.
Nostalgia, my first watch, was a good design to present to the public. Talking to people about making the watch itself, I was often asked to identify the abalone shape. To me, it was an abstract wave, another symbol of the ocean, but not everyone saw it that way. So I’d ask people what they thought and was delighted by the different visions people had—cats, octopus, quails, dolphins, a dancing hippo, and more. This impromptu “Rorschach test” gave me a way to play with my customers and build connections that motivated and inspired me to add more shell colors and expand the wood choices. The watch could be anything to the wearer—whatever was most meaningful to them. Being organic, each piece of shell had a different mottled nature that made each watch unique. A cat in one watch could become a dancing lady in another.
The Nostalgia design was clean and simple without numbers on the dial. Several people told me it was difficult to tell time without numbers, so eventually I designed a watch with dial dots called Radiance. In many different colors, this starburst allows light to radiate from behind the mother of pearl. I felt euphoric with two designs on the table.
CELESTE WONG - FOUNDER, DESIGNER AND WATCHMAKER
Celeste was awarded Business Person of the Year in 2022 by the Springfield Chamber of Commerce. Having opened her store in the downtown historic district of Springfield, Oregon, Celeste Watch Company has become a destination for many visitors.
Celeste is the spirit and force behind Celeste Watch Company. Wanting to be a watchmaker since childhood, Celeste first became a biomedical engineer and ran her own engineering education company for 18 years. She is the author of over 20 books and booklets on engineering careers and education. In 2005 she was awarded the prestigious Norm Augustine Award from the National Academy of Engineering, given to an engineer every two years who has demonstrated the capacity for communicating the excitement and wonder of engineering. (Two years earlier, astronaut Neil Armstrong won this award.) She also won the ASEE Engineering Deans Council Award for the Promotion of Engineering Education and Careers. The National Engineers Week website listed her as one of “50 Engineers You Should Meet.” The National Academy of Engineering has included Celeste in their Gallery of Women Engineers and she has been named one of the Nifty-Fifty individuals who have made a major impact on the field of engineering by the USA Science and Engineering Festival. These distinguished accomplishments paved her way to watchmaking. A self-taught watch designer, dial artist, and watchmaker, Celeste uses her engineering brain to refine and improve every process from design, to material choices, preparation, and coloring; cutting, cleaning, inlay, then building and testing the watches for integrity. She works with individual customers to design their custom timepieces, maintains the Celeste Watch Company website, travels to festivals to celebrate her watches with the people she meets, and explores ways to improve everything. A serial entrepreneur, Celeste has worked for herself for 28 of the last 30 years.
Featured in Forbes Magazine
From Engineer And Educator To Watchmaker – Celeste Wong Changes Careers After 50
REBECCA MONTGOMERY, DIAL ARTIST/TECHNICIAN
Rebecca Montgomery is an extraordinary dial artist. Fiercely intense, she has steady hands and is intrinsically motivated to do her best. She and Celeste collaborate in an organic manner to work out each design, refining and improving the processes to create each inlay art piece. At ease working with a microscope, Rebecca’s eye for detail and ability to reliably repeat a process over time has helped Celeste Watch Company overcome previous production limitations and grow by leaps and bounds. Rebecca’s previous career was in science as a Senior Research Assistant at the University of Oregon.