WristWatch Magazine #18 | Page 30

b BOUTIQUE GREAT EXPECTATIONS First launched in 2012, the GREAT Britain international marketing campaign promotes the very best that Britain has to offer in order to encourage the world to visit, invest, do business with and study in the British Isles. As a partner of this ambitious global campaign, Roger Smith has created the new GREAT Britain watch, designed to celebrate the creativity, innovation and technology that make Britain GREAT. Like all timepieces that come out of the Roger Smith studio, the GREAT Britain watch is conceived out of the Daniels Method, requiring every single timekeeping component to be handmade within the watchmaker’s studio. Thus, fewer than ten pieces are created each year. The handmade and hand-engraved platinum case frames a sterling silver three-dimensional dial comprising thirty-four individual parts that depict an off-center Union flag. Visible through the exhibition caseback is the one-of-a-kind manual-wind movement, featuring a ¾ plate with floral hand-engraved raised barrel bridge, fitted with the Isle of Man’s Triskellion symbol and two applied sterling silver cartouches engraved with GREAT Britain and MMXIII. At the heart of the watch is the new, second generation Single-Wheel Co-axial escapement, equipped with a radically lightened escape wheel that benefits the performance of the escapement with a faster acceleration and less abrupt deceleration. 30 WRISTWATCH | 2016