What the caseback doesn't tell you
The CHOPTANK began as a sketch made from a boat. Each note below says where it comes from.
Sketched from the bow
Hartwig Balke drew the shape on his sketch pad from the bow of his boat one morning, looking at a Choptank River beacon. He rounded the corners, flattened the ends, and had the case. He engineered it in Maryland, and Ickler, Towson's case maker in Pforzheim since 2000, machines it to his drawings.
The Nuremberg Egg
George Thomas restored a watch from 1530 that belonged to Philipp Melanchthon, now at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. Afterward he asked Balke to help design watches with that sculptural feel for the wrist. The PRIDE II came in 2010 and the CHOPTANK in 2016.
Sixty hours a dial
Jochen Benzinger cuts each sterling silver dial of the Benzinger CHOPTANK by hand on rose engines in Pforzheim, more than 60 hours a piece. He and Balke grew up together there and taught each other their trades.
The cover watch
In 2022 the Benzinger CHOPTANK was on the cover of the Wristwatch Annual.
Plated, not painted
The salmon tone is 5N rose gold, plated galvanically over a guilloché silver dial. It is metal, with no paint involved.
P for Petite
TALBOT's reference, EP250, is the CHOPTANK's E250 with a P for Petite. Released in 2025, it is the first Towson watch designed entirely by the founders' apprentices.
No words on the dial
The TALBOT dial carries no descriptive print. Shape, color and form do the work that text does on other watches.
On film
Before the CHOPTANK there was the Driver, ref. TD100: an off-center driver's watch designed by Hartwig Balke, with dial and movement by Jochen Benzinger, assembled and regulated by George Thomas. Fifty pieces per case metal. Balke calls it the most challenging watch he made.