Speake-Marin is one of the newest entrants into the luxury watch market; the company was founded in the year 2000 by Englishman Peter Speake-Marin. Peter studied at the prestigious Swiss watchmaking school, WOSTEP, and after returning to England, he worked as the head of antique watch restoration department at Somio Antiques in Piccadily Arcade and that’s where the inspiration for his latest watch comes from.
Speake-Marin Resilience is the latest watch to come out of their workshop based in Switzerland. The Resilience watch has a very clean looking face and the dial is enameled and is made using techniques that were used in clock and watchmaking for hundreds of years. The base dial is made out of copper that has been enameled 5 times to give it an even surface, baked in an oven at over 800° C. The Roman numerals representing the hour markers are also enameled but in black which requires less heat to bake.
The watch gets its name, Resilience, from the antique pocket watches that Peter worked on restoring; the dials on these pocket watches were enamel but still looked as good as new because enameled items don’t tarnish with age, making them resilient.
The Speake-Marin Resilience watch comes in stainless steel or 18k rose gold cases that come in either 38mm or 42mm varieties and are 12mm thick. The three-piece case is called Piccadily and houses the Eros 2 automatic movement with an impressive 120 hour (5 day) power reserve. The dial and the see-through case-back are covered with AR coated sapphire crystal and the watch is attached to a hand-crafted black alligator strap.
