Some watches came together on their own. This was one of them.

The workshop sat in the shadow of Lincoln Cathedral. Our window looked out at the Bishop's Eye, the round window on the south side with its circular stone tracery. That same window looked over the old home of William Paley, who wrote the watchmaker analogy two hundred years ago. Around the same time, we got to know Dominic Parczuk, a painter known locally for his Lincolnshire landscapes.

It felt like enough to build a watch around. Assembled a few hundred yards from the Cathedral, using the Bishop's Eye as the starting point for the dial. Watches don't design themselves, whatever the analogy says, so Jason did the work: taking the tracery and turning it into a dial where the shadows in the stone became the shadows in the metal. We asked Dominic to paint an original piece for it, his first time painting for a watch. The crown carried a fleur-de-lys, an old symbol of the city.

Every Lincoln came with a signed print of Dominic's painting. The dial held a miniature version of it. The print was the original, full size, ready to frame. As far as we knew, no one had offered a watch this way before.

We made fifty. That was what Rob could build by hand in a year, and it felt right for a watch this tied to one place, one painting, one story. Each caseback carried its number. The print carried the same one.