NY Post
N.C. MAISAK
"Time," says Meliés, as he glances at the half-dozen wristwatches he’s wearing, three per arm, like bangle bracelets, "is different for everyone. For me, it goes much slower."
He says that’s why, even though he’s been in New York for a decade, he feels as though he left his native Uruguay only yesterday. A lot has happened in that time; even he doesn’t need to watch his watches to know that his 15 minutes of fame has started.
The Meliés time line goes like this: Artist comes to the Big Apple on his honeymoon, and faster than a New York minute falls madly in love with the city, and starts designing art watches, which wind up not only filling the glass cases of galleries all over the world, including the American Craft Museum in Manhattan, but also adorning the wrists of celebrities on shows like "Sex and the City," "100 Centre Street" and "All My Children."
"The minute I saw Meliés’ watches, I knew they’d be hot, and I had to have one," says Bobby Cannavale, star of "Third Watch" and "100 Centre Street." "Now, I’m giving them as gifts to everyone I know so they won’t steal mine."
Meliés’ handcrafted watches, which cost from $250 to $400, are made entirely of brass, sterling silver, copper and titanium even the bands. As a result, they have a chunky, industrial look that sets them apart from the typical timepiece. Meliés makes them in limited editions of 1,000 each, which he signs and numbers.
"They are functional art," says the 40-year-old Meliés, who lives in Jamaica Estates, Queens, a couple of blocks from Donald Trump’s mother. "Some of them are made of distressed metals and are meant to age with the wearer to show the passage of time."
Fascinated by time since he was a child, Meliés, who had been
a successful art photographer in Uruguay, began by making clock sculptures
he recently gave one to George Stephanopoulos as an engagement present
and eventually began creating wristwatches for himself and his friends.
"I started it on a work table on the floor in a corner of our apartment,"
he says. "My wife would go to work, and I used to care for my little
daughter, Viriginia, between making the watches. Then I went to my first
trade show, and I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I got
100 clients and was swamped."
Thus, in 1994, Watchcraft as he dubbed his new enterperise began ticking. Meliés scraped together $20,000, dipping into his meager savings and borrowing money from his friends and his wife, Patricia, whose job as a physical therapist supported him and the company.
"We came over here only with the money we got from our wedding gifts," he says. "That lasted us a couple of months. There were a lot of people who believed in me."
Perhaps the most important is Manhattan artist Marcia Gygli King, who has been one of Meliés’ biggest supporters and has helped open doors for him.
"Meliés is one of those rare artists who can take something as ordinary as a watch and turn it into an extraordinary work of art," King says. "His watches will be huge."
Today, Meliés has seven craftsmen and his own Web site, www.watchcraft-online.com, and has moved his operations into the old Apple Tag & Label Building on Northern Boulevard in Long Island City, where he rents two floors and has a design studio.
"I’m really living the American dream," he says. "This would never have happened to me if I had stayed in Uruguay."