Dear Friends,

What have we been up to these last months? The simple answer is A LOT – and on all fronts. This newsletter will give you a quick roundup of our latest Legacy Machines, Horological Machine, Co-Creation… But most importantly, a few months ago we released this year’s most important launch so far, the Legacy Machine FlyingT. Read on!

14 years ago, I started MB&F to create timepieces for a very restricted target group: myself. Please don’t interpret that as arrogance; I was simply trying to create very personal, unconventional mechanical art that happened to deliver time on your wrist. I obviously hoped that a few collectors would like what I was doing – otherwise the MB&F adventure would have stopped pretty quickly! – and that has fortunately been the case.

Today, I continue to create timepieces with our Friends in the same way, but a few years ago, I felt the need to create for another group: women. Why? Because since my father’s passing 17 years ago, my family has been exclusively women: my mother (who also passed away last year), my wife, and my two daughters. I guess it was just a matter of time before I felt the need to create something for them – and for women in general.

After creating just for myself for so many years, that proved to be more difficult than expected. I started and scrapped several projects, until I finally realised that I had to stop trying to guess what women would like in an MB&F piece. Instead, I injected in this new Machine the two qualities I admire in the women of my life: energy and elegance. That special combination also had to remain a piece of 3-dimensional mechanical sculpture, like everything we do at MB&F.

The result is the LM FlyingT. A very unconventional movement, built like a tower or column, topped by a 60-second flying tourbillon that gives the piece its name. The rotating column reminds me of the spinning ballerinas of my elder daughter’s music boxes. One of our major challenges was to create a “feminine” movement, which in my mind had to be obtained by removing or reducing all the visible bridges, keeping only the most essential. The resulting in-house calibre is lodged in our most refined, elegant case to date – crafted from 18k white gold and set with diamonds.

The time display is unusual: placed at 7 o’clock and tilted at 50 degrees. Actually a very ergonomic placement of the display, but more importantly, a very personal indication of the time since the woman wearing the watch is the only person who can read the time: our gift to women. Turn the FlyingT over for a final surprise: a 3-dimensional winding rotor shaped like a sun, sculpted from 18k rose gold. Why a sun? On one hand, the sun provides energy to our planet, just like the rotor powers the movement. But more importantly, my own solar system happens to be the three women in my life: I constantly gravitate around them.

The LM FlyingT was launched at Baselworld this year in three editions: Black Lacquer, Pavée (set with brilliant-cut diamonds) and Baguette (set with baguette diamonds). The response – much to my relief – has been truly amazing, from women and men alike… Discover more about this new very important collection on our website.

Technically the LM FlyingT is part of our Legacy Machine collection, which goes back to 2011... The first LM1 created a bit of a surprise at the time, but in the meantime, 8 years later, the Legacy Machines are a well-established part of MB&F. If you’ve been following us for a while, you know our LMs are the more classic MB&F timepieces – the ones we could have created if we’d been around a century or two ago. The “flying” balance wheel, floating above the dial, is their signature element – and it was highlighted to the max with the LM Split Escapement, conceived with our talented Friend Stephen McDonnell.

After the launch editions in 2017 with traditional hand-frosted dials in white gold cases, we added a more contemporary limited edition this year, in a grade 5 titanium case – along with a green CVD sunray dial. We’ve limited this new edition to just 33 pieces.

You like the Legacy Machines? Then I have more good news for you: just a few days ago, we released a new edition of Legacy Machine No.2, the LM2 Red Gold Blue. To make a long story short, the LM2 features not just one but two flying balances, each beating at its own rate, averaged by a central planetary differential. This will be the last-ever LM2 in red gold, one of our favourite materials – and we’ve paired the 12 pieces of this very limited edition with a dial plate in a really deep, rich blue. Practically all of those 12 pieces are sold already, so if this is the LM for you, contact your retailer or let us know fast!

The first paragraphs of this newsletter are focused on Legacy Machines, but Horological Machines – “HMs” for short – remain our most important product line. Inside the HMs, you’ll find the same ingredients as our Legacy Machines, namely traditional, mechanical watchmaking of the highest quality – but the likeness stops there. With the HMs, we deconstruct high-end traditional watchmaking and reconstruct it into 3-dimensional timekeeping sculptures for the wrist. Very often, we find the inspiration for these Horological Machines in our childhoods – but also from more recent memories. For example the sting of a jellyfish during a family vacation, which is what started Horological Machine No.7, aka HM7 Aquapod.

The HM7 Aquapod was conceived and designed like a mechanical jellyfish! First launched in two editions (titanium with blue bezel and red gold with black bezel), a third jellyfish (titanium with green bezel) joined the collection last year. And then last month, we unveiled the HM7 Platinum Red. Housed in a precious platinum case, cloaked in a striking red colour, this particular species of the Aquapod has a few special features which make it our most extreme jellyfish to date. Floating hour and minute numerals, each one carved out of titanium and filled with Super-LumiNova, push the 3-D nature of this creature further. For extra transparency, we’ve added a tourbillon bridge in sapphire crystal; and finally, this jellyfish glows even more in the dark thanks to lume-filled numbers and indexes on the unidirectional rotating sapphire bezel.

The HM7 Platinum Red is limited to just 25 pieces.

Last but not least: Co-Creations. If the HM7 Aquapod is a jellyfish for your wrist, then Medusa is a jellyfish for your desk (or ceiling, I’ll get to that in a second).

For Medusa we teamed up once again with our most prolific Co-Creation partner, L’Epée 1839 – the last remaining Manufacture in Switzerland devoted to high-end mechanical table clocks. Since 2014, we’ve created no less than 10 clocks together – and for Medusa, L’Epée actually went over the Swiss border, finding an essential partner in Italy. Yes, Medusa’s glass is blown by hand in the artisanal workshops on the island of Murano, next to Venice. Combining the very artisanal nature of Murano glass with the hyper-precise, uncompromising requirements of quality clock making was a bit of a challenge – but we think the result was definitely worth it!

If you want to push the jellyfish illusion to its limits, let this mechanical creature float in mid-air, like a jellyfish floating in a tropical ocean. Simply lift it off its metallic base, attach it to the supplied cable, and add the matching Murano-glass tentacles…

Medusa is available in 3 limited editions in blue, green and pink. Read more about it on our website or – if you’d like to get your hands on it fast – check it out at our eShop.

By the way, talking about jellyfish: I hope you’re reading this on a nice beach... or perhaps a beautiful place up in the mountains, or wherever your idea of a great vacation is. In any case, don’t forget to take some time off!