Daryn Schnipper, senior vice-president and chairman of Sotheby’s International Watch Division, was earning her stripes in the world of watches for many years before joining the auction house.
“I studied journalism at Boston University and, as a summer internship, worked for a watch dealer doing research on a book he was writing on watches,” recounts Daryn.
She also did an internship at the Victoria and Albert museum in London, during which time she studied watches with a private tutor at The School of Art, Architecture and Design at London Metropolitan University.
So, Daryn was in the perfect position to hit the ground running when she landed her first role as a watch cataloguer at Sotheby’s in New York after graduating in 1980.
For a woman who has spent more than four decades in the same institution, what is it about the daily grind at Sotheby’s that keeps her motivated?
“I’d say no two days are ever the same,” she says. “It’s always hectic, between vetting property to take for sale, finalizing deals, meeting with clients, working with cataloguers and photographers, selling the sales, putting collectors together with watches.”
Daryn lists some of her achievements in the past decade as being some of her greatest, despite how long she’s been in the game: “If I look at the last 10 years, I’ve had major wins, which included selling the [Patek Philippe] Henry Graves [Supercomplication] for the second time with yet another record-breaking price, selling the estate of Henry Graves’ grandson Pete Fullerton, auctioning both of George Daniels’ Space Travellers twice and getting record prices of over $4 million per watch, and selling the [Patek Philippe] pink on pink ref. 1518 for a record-breaking price of nearly $10 million in December 2021.”
Not content with simply staying in top gear professionally, Daryn doesn’t slow down on the weekends.
“I’m an avid skier,” she says. “You will find me out on the slopes every weekend from late November to early April,” she says. Her other high-octane hobby is sailing, and for days when she’s in the mood for a slightly slower pace, she likes to tend her garden, a hobby she picked up during the pandemic.