Design

Johnny Dowell aka King Nerd

Ifirst met Johnny also known as ‘King Nerd’ virtually (after all this is 2020), back in April after chatting online to Phil Toledano (@misterenthusiast). Phil had shown me the Rolex collaboration he was working on with Johnny, an image of which you can see within this article. After a bit of research I then stumbled upon the Leica Johnny engraved for photographer Gavin Bond, and I just knew I wanted to feature this amazing work in an issue of b500. Well here it is and sorry it’s taken so long, such is the fact that both myself and Johnny have been so busy over the last few months that we have only recently caught up again on the phone to discuss ‘getting it done’. Johnny has a lot of different projects on the boil right now, a couple of which I have been given a preview of, and although I’m sworn to secrecy I can say they look bloody amazing!

Johnny began his journey by studying Art with the plan of one day studying Fashion at Central Saint Martins.

Central Saint Martins ultimately wasn’t the route he would take though, as a chance encounter with someone working for 200 year old gun company James Purdey and Son’s, would make him start to reconsider his options.

Johnny recalls a family friend saying to him “look at me, I’ve done it without Saint Martins, people don’t go there and automatically come out as the next Versace, it doesn’t work like that and if you love fashion enough you can come back to it at any time and try something else first”.

Johnny believes this discussion is what made him make his decision and from there he would go on to complete a five year apprenticeship as an engraver at James Purdey and Son’s, a company he would remain at for 15 years in total and in that time he was the only person trained as an engraver.

After 15 years under the Richemont group, spending every day in the luxury world, Johnny would eventually leave and apply his love for Art, Design and Engraving to various luxury and bespoke products and projects.

The Gavin Bond Leica came about when GQ photographer Gavin contacted Johnny and gave him the brief to do what he wanted, but ensuring his name was on it to give it the finished personal touch. Johnny had thought about engraving a Leica for sometime and so this was the perfect commission. The end result a masterpiece of engraving skills creating a one-of-one for the GQ M6 Leica shooter. For this special and highly personal camera Johnny used a series of ornate scrolling patterns which cover pretty much the whole body.

As a Leica shooter myself I could think of no better way to personalise what is already a work of art. With Johnny’s skill and experience nowadays attracting (quite rightly so) a high cost, I might just about be able to get King Nerd to engrave ‘DG’ on the baseplate.