Bench-top study, fol. I

A bench, a rose engine, a workpiece.

Three notes from the bench at Garrick Watchmakers — Norfolk, England. Each note adds a layer of cut to the workpiece on your right. By the final rule the dial is finished, and the dial is yours.

Bench Note 01 The Workshop

Garrick was founded in 2014 by David Brailsford and the late master watchmaker Simon Michlmayr. Today the firm operates from a single bench-room in Norfolk, where every timepiece is built to order — no stock, no automated production, no series.

The Norfolk workshop houses two early-twentieth-century rose engines and a straight-line engine, restored and re-tuned in-house. Dials, hands, plates, bridges, jewel chatons, screws and thermal-blueing are produced on site. The output is small — a handful of timepieces a year — and each leaves the bench under a single watchmaker's name.

Foundation2014
AtelierNorfolk, England
Output≤ 24 timepieces / yr
Manufactureparts in-house

Bench Note 02 The Movement

At the centre of the workpiece is the UT-G02 — Garrick's hand-wound calibre, designed and finished entirely on the bench. Free-sprung balance. Direct-impulse to a deadbeat seconds wheel. A sixty-hour reserve held in a single barrel, regulated to within a few seconds a day.

Bridges are bevelled by hand to a polished anglage; flanks brushed; surfaces frosted with a fine bone-and-zinc paste. Screws are drawn from steel and heated over a brass tray to 295 °C, the temperature at which the surface oxide turns the colour of a kingfisher's wing. A blue Garrick screw is recognisable across a room.

CalibreUT-G02 hand-wound
BalanceFree-sprung, 18 000 vph
Reserve60 h, single barrel
Finishthermal-blued steel · 295 °C

Bench Note 03 The Dial

The dial is cut, not printed. A blank of German silver is mounted to the rose engine's mandrel; a diamond cutter is fixed in the cradle; a rosette wheel is selected from the rack. As the watchmaker turns the handle, the cradle rocks against the rosette and the cutter inscribes a single, continuous line of light into the metal.

Three patterns recur in Garrick dials. Soleil, the sunburst, struck from the centre to the edge in ninety-six rays. Panier, the basket, a doubly-cut grid that catches the light from two angles. Clous de Paris, the hobnail, a dense lattice of pyramidal points. The same blank can wear any of them; each takes a full afternoon at the engine.

StockGerman silver, Ø 38.00 mm
Cutterdiamond burin, 0.20 mm
Patternssoleil · panier · clous
Cycle248 rotations / dial

01 S2 Deadbeat Seconds Ø 42 mm · panier dial · pink-gold case h10.8 mm · 60 h · ed. 12
02 S3 Deadbeat Seconds, Power Reserve Ø 40 mm · open-worked dial · GPHG finalist h11.2 mm · 60 h · ed. 8
03 S7 Guilloché Ø 38 mm · soleil dial · 38 mm pink-gold case h9.8 mm · 60 h · ed. 24
04 S8 Open Dial, in preparation Ø 40 mm · clous-de-Paris chapter · revealed at Watches & Wonders, MMXXVI h10.4 mm · 60 h · ed. tbc

For correspondence with the bench — write to the workshop.

Atelier Garrick Watchmakers Norfolk · England
Coordinates 52°37′N · 1°17′E Folio I, MMXXVI
Bench One room, two engines 248 rotations / dial
This dial № —— cut as you read

Set in Marcellus & DM Mono. Composed at the bench, in correspondence with the workshop in Norfolk. Every line you have just read was cut, not printed.