The Robert Lighton Quartet

[FuzzyB]

Part II - The Empire

The Empire was the most traditional of all Robert Lightons. For that reason, I believed it was also one of the least appreciated models.



The Empire has a clean, bright white dial with large Arabic numbers. The case is relatively simple with brushed sides and a polished bezel and upper lug surfaces.





The short lugs make it comfortable on the wrist. I believe the case is around 40mm in size.

The beauty of the Empire lies in the hands. They are gorgeous. As mentioned above, all Robert Lighton models used flame-blued hands. The hands on the Empire show off the beauty of flame-blued hands more than any other watch I've seen. A simple series of pictures will illustrate this. The only difference between the first picture and the second picture is the position of the light.





A great deal of effort went into the hands on the Empire. These are not simple stamped hands. They are sculpted and curved.





I wish all hands were so beautiful.



Robert Lighton used high quality straps for all of his watches. With the exception of the Growler, the watches came on finely crafted alligator straps. Another nice touch was the inclusion of a sterling silver buckle for each watch. Each model came with a buckle finished to match the watch.



The caseback of the Empire is highly polished.