Derek Pratt

Derek Pratt

British watchmaker Derek Pratt was recognised as one of the finest watchmakers of the modern era. His pocket watches broke new ground for their beautiful designs, extraordinary levels of hand craftmanship and technical invention. Derek Pratt Watches have created a wristwatch with Derek’s innovated remontoire to pay homage to his outstanding contribution to watchmaking.
Images by Guy Lucas De Peslouan

The Development of the Derek Pratt Wristwatch


The Derek Pratt Wristwatch incorporates many of Derek's innovations.
Hour, minute and seconds hands, with the seconds hands beating seconds.
Free sprung balance with overcoil hairspring.
Derek's development of remontoire escapement.
Twin free-standing mainspring barrels.
Engine turned silver dial.
18k white gold case


Derek Pratt's Remontoire

Among his many innovations, his remontoire is surely his most notable
Powered by twin free standing barrels, the remontoire delivers
absolutely constant power to balance, rather than very strong when fully wound and weaker as the mainspring
winds down. This insures greater timekeeping accuracy.
Secondly the remontoire results in dead seconds indication of the second hand

Derek Pratt’s Remontoire
Read on

Twin Barrels

The twin free-standing mainspring barrels are deployed in parallel in order to generate a steady power supply for the remontoire and escapement.
The barrels are of Donner design for smooth and even power delivery

Derek Pratt Wristwatch

While Derek never made the wristwatch, he closely followed and advised during
the development of the watch that bore his name.


Derek examining initial
straight-line prototype
Initial Straight-line
prototype
Top plate side of first Derek Pratt
wristwatch prototype
Dial side of first Derek
Pratt wristwatch prototype

Engine Turned Dials

It will come as a surprise to many that Derek was the first to re-introduce engine turned dials to modern watches.
It was subsequently adopted by other Swiss, German and English watch brands.