For most of the last two years, every award we made passed through a single engraving station. Casting could run in parallel. Polishing could run in parallel. Engraving was one bench, one operator, one queue.
As of this month there are two.
Why this was the bottleneck
Engraving is the last thing that happens and the only thing that cannot be undone. A cup can be re-polished. A base can be re-cut. A misspelled name means the piece starts again from the mould.
That makes it the stage where speed is most expensive. When a season peaks — sports days in February, annual nights in December — a single bench turns a comfortable ten-day promise into an uncomfortable one, and the temptation is to work faster rather than to work later.
What changes for an order
Nothing about the process, and nothing about the price. What changes is the shape of our peak weeks: the second bench absorbs the surge instead of the schedule absorbing it.
In practice, orders of under fifty pieces placed in a peak month should now quote at the same seven to ten days as they do in a quiet one. Larger runs still get a date we work backwards from rather than a date we hope for.
The proof step is unchanged. Nothing is etched until you have approved exactly how the names read.
Crafted for moments that matter.
