Fionn Morgan, Ian Fleming’s stepdaughter, regarding our upcoming “Bond Watches, James Bond Watches” exhibit

In addition to working with James Bond Watches website creator Dell Deaton to make her stepfather’s Rolex Explorer model 1016 wristwatch available for upcoming display at the National Watch & Clock Museum starting in June of 2010, Fionn Morgan said the following in support of the highly-anticipated exhibit.

Ian would have enjoyed the idea of displaying his own Oyster Perpetual as part of an exhibition of James Bond watches. He was fascinated by mechanical things and always wanted the best.

As the fans well-know, Ian Fleming drew from his personal life and tastes when creating the details of Agent 007′s personal preferences. This Rolex was Ian’s first and only, and important enough for him to have kept to the end. So now visitors can see the particular wristwatch that he “gave” Bond to wear in the On Her Majesty’s Secret Service book.

I further think that Ian would have been pleased with all the other watches and the creative uses to which they have been put in the movies throughout the years that have followed.

It is wonderful to see the James Bond legacy presented through the watches that this character has worn. It is further most gratifying to see Ian’s Explorer 1016 displayed as the origin of this long and continuous chronology. Collectors and the public will learn a lot through this exhibition.

Fionn Morgan made this formal statement to Dell Deaton for attribution  on April 8, 2009.

Leading up to that conversation, Ms. Morgan also shared the following personal thoughts with Mr. Deaton, further putting the Ian Fleming / original James Bond wristwatch in context.

I never gave Ian’s watch a thought until the day I collected Mama’s things from the bank after her death. And then, as you know, occurred the incident of picking it up and finding it going. Everyone asks: Was it telling the right time, and, again, as you know, that would be asking too much….

The watch is important to me because it belonged to Ian, whom I loved. I scarcely knew my father who, alas, was killed in Italy in 1944. Ian I knew, and [he] liked my father. Unlike Esmond Rothermere … Ian had taken an interest in his future stepdaughter since she was four years old. He did not become my stepfather until I was fifteen. By then we were firm friends and he did his best to be a father in place of his friend, Shane O’Neill.

To her, the fundamental importance of this Rolex model 1016 Explorer watch is the man who owned and wore it — what that man meant to her.

“Bond Watches, James Bond Watches” will be a special display at the National Watch & Clock Museum in Columbia, Pennsylvania, scheduled for June 2010 through May 2011. NAWCC member Dell Deaton is serving as Guest Curator. The exhibit will also include examples of the watches worn throughout the James Bond novels and motion pictures.

The National Watch and Clock Museum is operated by the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors, Inc. (“NAWCC”), a nonprofit 501(c)(3) association with close to 21,000 members, representing 52 countries.