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SUPER MECCANICA
MB&F: Max Büsser & Friends Horological Machine No.1
by Ian Skellern
Posted 14 September, 2006
Singapore time
They are a rare
breed — men who’ve already ascended to the apex of achievement in one
field before stepping away at the dizzying height to blaze a new path to
glory. In the movie world, it’s been done three times in recent memory.
First by Clint Eastwood — the iron jawed, spaghetti western grim reaper
who immersed himself in directing to come up with the beautifully nuanced,
existentialist gem, The Unforgiven. Similarly, Mel Gibson, who lit
up screens with Gallipoli and The Year of Living Dangerously
with a visceral energy that had critics hailing him as the second coming
of Brando, later surprised the same critics by directing the Academy
Award-winning Braveheart.
In the watch
world, a man named Max Büsser is poised to enact a similar story of
ascendant role change by stepping into the shoes of a brand owner. Büsser
was working in Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Le Sentier headquarters when he was
handpicked to revitalize Harry Winston’s timepiece division. He
accomplished this in two ways. First, he brought high watchmaking
credibility to Harry Winston by making it a hothouse for horological
innovation through the Opus series of watches. This series paired the
manufacture with a star independent watchmaker each year to create
breathtakingly imaginative high complications. At the same time, Büsser
tapped Emanuel Gueit, the designer of the Royal Oak Offshore, to create a
range of robust, pure, iconic sports watches known as the Z family. Then
five years into his success, when Büsser was at the very peak of his
career, he decided to step away from Harry Winston to begin his own
boutique watch company, Max Büsser and Friends or MB&F. His watches build
on the relationships he created with the world’s foremost independent
watchmakers. Under Büsser’s command will be a rotating team comprised of
some of watchmaking’s most exciting technical wizards and aesthetic
firebrands bound by the spirit of human collaboration. The result of this
collaboration has been the birth of MB&F’s first Horological Machine, a
four barreled timepiece with flying central tourbillon.
MB&F’s Horological
Machines — as each of his watches will be named — are machines which
tell the time rather than machines to tell the time. This
distinction is crucial to the understanding of MB&F’s timepieces because
they have nothing to do with the mundane necessity to read time and are
all about the luxurious expression of time. Telling time with a MB&F
Horological Machine 1 is an emotional experience in the same way owning a
Ferrari Enzo or Pagani Zonda is an emotional experience. It is a mobile,
high performance sculpture, bristling with futurist inspired styling and
real functional innovation.
When asked what a
modern timepiece meant to him, Büsser explained, “It is a functional tool
as well as a work of art, a piece of jewelry, a means of self-expression
and a high performance machine. Emotional values would center mostly
around a real creativity unseen to date, a courage or even a boldness in
the attitude of the project and finally the personality of the creator. ”
The
personality is strongly expressed here. Look at HM1 and the first
thing you’ll notice is the sheer volume of the case. In the modern
watchmaking universe it is a prime example of
sculpture-meets-engineering; Captain Nemo’s Nautilus-meets-Captain
Kirk’s Starship Enterprise. If you look at the side of the case
from below, you can easily imagine an enormous architectural structure
and the three-dimensionality of the timepiece continues in the
multiple levels of the dial and indications. Hour and minute dials are
separated by an elevated central tourbillon; notice how raising the
tourbillon above the dial and suspending it from the single-arm cock —
reminiscent of vintage Breguet pocket watches — allows the viewer to
see right inside the beating heart of the movement.
As modernist as it
may appear, HM1 is also a tribute to Büsser’s vast devotion to legitimate
horology. The development of the new caliber, actualized through the
partnership of movement engineer Laurent Besse with AHCI member Peter
Speake-Marin, was a match made in heaven. The synthesis of Besse’s
engineering background with Speake-Marin’s roots in classical horology
ensures that, although the movement looks like it were torn from the
fabric of the future, its quality and finish are solidly founded on the
very finest aspects of traditional haute horlogerie. The tourbillon cage,
for example, is inspired by the battle axe of a Japanese Magna hero from
Büsser’s childhood, yet it receives stunning black polish — one of the
most difficult finishes to execute in traditional high watchmaking.
A PREOCCUPATION WITH POWER
Quality of energy was one of HM1’s primary
focuses. While the tourbillon may be the technical element to first
catch the eye, it was the four massive mainspring barrels under the
dial which dictated the foundation of HM1's movement design and
construction. The two barrels on the left are wound by the rotor;
while the two barrels on the right are wound by the crown. Each pair
of barrels needs to equalize their energy with the other around the
void of the tourbillon in the narrowest section of the movement.
Distributing that immense power required the development of a
sophisticated beryllium gear train. Using four mainspring barrels in
parallel enabled MB&F to reduce the torque of each
mainspring, thus improving accuracy,
decreasing wear and increasing longevity
- all while
maintaining an incredible seven days reserve
of power!
A clear view of the four barrels that contribute to
HM1’s phenomenal consistency in power
A CREATIVE REPRESENTATION OF TIME
On the dial side the HM1 looks like the command center of a rocket
ship. The dial on the right provides a reading for minutes with a
massive speedometer needle-like hand. An indication for the watch’s
massive four barreled fuel tank is also mounted on this same axis. On
the left dial you have a reading for hours. Both dials feature
transverse mounted floating sapphire subdials to provide time
indication on the left, and on which the power reserve indication is
engraved on the right. The hour and minute hands have to communicate
with each other across the massive divide between them. This was
accomplished with an oversized, ultra-flat, mirror-polished wheel
centrally located under the dial. Too thin to support from its axis,
this wheel cleverly floats between two layers of precision-adjusted
jewels. Because of the artisan minutia involved, only 100 watches will
be made in the next three years. Indeed the Horological Machine No.1
is the horological equivalent of a super car. It is a mixture of
technical mastery, truly refined traditional finish, and
groundbreaking new aesthetics that heralds the arrival of one of the
new masters of form and function — a new world collective known as
MB&F, spearheaded by one of the watch industry’s most exciting young
leaders, a man named Max Büsser.
Both
dials feature transverse mounted floating sapphire crystal subdials
adding to the three-dimensional effect
Two of the 25 friends involved in the
construction of MB&F’s HM1, Max Büsser (left) and the watch’s designer Eric Giroud.
Thanks to Revolution Press for making this article available to TimeZone. Please visit the Revolution web site!
Read Wei Koh's interview with
Max Büsser
Read Wei Koh's interview with
Eric Giroud
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