Hand engraving in silver: a scene from Trajan's Column on a four-centimetre dial

An article from September 2026 on hand engraving in silver as it is worked in the Bucharest workshop: with hand-held tools, under magnification, on a four-centimetre disc on which the whole composition has to stay legible. The watch is built around the finished dial, on a Swiss calibre.

Our Daily Wire starts from the material asked for before the tools: a thin sheet of silver, brought by a jeweller, on which Augustin began to engrave a scene from Trajan's Column, as he told Revista Cariere in 2016. The tools came one at a time; the microscope was, at first, a geology one, not an engraving one.

The article also explains why a wrong line does not come back out: engraving takes metal away, and a badly placed cut means a dial started again. Silver appears on the dial of the watch given to Pope Francis and on the APOLLO 11 piece.

The summary is written by the workshop. The article, its headline and its photographs belong to the publication.