Joshua Shapiro is a prominent American watchmaker and the founder of the Los Angeles-based horological brand J.N. Shapiro. Born and raised in Southern California, Shapiro’s connection to craftsmanship began in his childhood, which he spent exploring his father and grandfather’s machine shop. This early exposure to machining and metalwork provided a technical foundation that would later define his professional career in high-end watchmaking.
Before entering the horological industry, Shapiro pursued a career in education. He earned both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in U.S. History from UCLA and worked as a history teacher and pole vault coach. He eventually moved into school administration and has served as a principal at a private high school in Los Angeles.
His formal journey into watchmaking began around 2011, sparked by a fascination with skeletonized movements. He sought to master the craft through self-study, utilizing George Daniels’ seminal book Watchmaking and completing a distance-learning program through the British Horological Institute. Shapiro initially focused on engine turning, also known as guilloché, a traditional decorative technique involving the mechanical engraving of intricate patterns onto watch dials. He spent several years amassing vintage rose engine and straight-line machines, often selling personal items like classic cars to fund the acquisition of professional-grade equipment.
In 2018, Shapiro established J.N. Shapiro Watches and launched his first collection, the Infinity Series. These timepieces gained international recognition for their highly complex, multi-layered guilloché dials, including the “Infinity Weave” pattern. While the early Infinity models utilized German-made movements from Uhren Werke Dresden (UWD), they established Shapiro as a rare artisan capable of producing world-class dial work on American soil.
A central ambition of Shapiro’s career has been the revival of the American watchmaking industry, which had largely ceased domestic movement production by the late 1960s. In 2023, he introduced the Resurgence, a timepiece marketed as the first fully “Made in USA” mechanical watch in over half a century. To achieve this, Shapiro expanded his workshop into a vertically integrated manufacture in Torrance, California, where his team produces the majority of the watch’s 180 components, including the case, dial, and the in-house movement. The Resurgence features traditional American finishing techniques like damaskeening and is notable for meeting strict Federal Trade Commission (FTC) standards for domestic manufacturing.
Joshua Shapiro remains a leading figure in the independent watchmaking community, known for his commitment to transparency and the preservation of traditional hand-operated machinery. He continues to balance his role as a CEO and master watchmaker with his work in education, occasionally incorporating watchmaking and STEM principles into his classroom teaching. Through his work, Shapiro has become a pivotal advocate for the “resurgence” of high horology in the United States.