Moonmachine
Overview
MoonMachine by Finnish watchmaker Stepan Sarpaneva is the first of the MB&F Performance Art pieces reinterpreted by a watchmaker – and the first to endow a Horological Machine with a new complication.
To create MoonMachine, Stepan reconfigured the HM3 Frog by turning it 90° and adding his iconic moon-face/moon-phase indicator. He also transformed the winding rotor into a scintillating firmament of laser-pierced northern stars, forming constellations visible in the northern sky.
About the collaboration
“Max and I have a very long friendship, and there is a lot of honesty between us. He pushes me to do better and gives me the most challenging projects. This time the challenge was to augment HM8, which is not easy. But it’s fun, and that’s why I say yes to any project with Max.”
Stepan Sarpaneva
MOON FACES
While a man’s face formed by craters on the Moon’s surface is the result of over-active imaginations, Sarpaneva has based MoonMachine’s moon faces on his own. It doesn’t get much more personal than that!
SAPPHIRE DOMES
The crafting of the sapphire crystal domes is incredibly demanding: the sapphire has to be shaped and polished perfectly, since any slight imperfection would introduce a disconcerting magnification effect.
WINDING ROTOR
The turning star-filled night sky of the rotor not only brings metaphoric life, but also literally provides life as it generates the power for both the functioning of the moon complication and the movement.
Machine in action
Around 4.5 billion years ago when the young Earth was still forming, Theia, a proto-planet the size of Mars, is thought to have struck our planet and disintegrated in a ‘Giant Impact’. Some of the debris was attracted by the Earth’s gravity and the rest – consisting of material from both Earth and Theia – went into orbit around the Earth. Within 12 months this orbiting debris coalesced to form the Moon.
Over the next 4.4 billion years, the Earth’s tilt in relation to the sun was stabilised by the gravitational pull of the Moon, which provided regular relatively mild seasons over much of the planet’s surface – ideal conditions for life to form and evolve.
Without that cataclysmic event, we would not be here. You might say we are all Children of the Moon.
And no sooner did modern man start walking the earth than he stared up at the night sky in wonder and awe at the biggest and brightest orb in the heavens. Perhaps none more so than the inhabitants of Finland – including Stepan Sarpaneva – because the less romantic and less well-known counterpoise to the summertime Land of the Midnight Sun are extremely long nights in winter, which gives the population more time than most to study the moon and stars.
THE MACHINE
Playfulness & poetry
While considerably less cataclysmic than the formation of our Moon, MOONMACHINE was also forged from the creative collision of two worlds: MB&F's HM3 Frog and independent watchmaker Stepan Sarpaneva.
Before launching his own brand Sarpaneva Watches in 2003, Stepan Sarpaneva worked with some of the most prestigious Swiss brands including Piaget, Parmigiani – where he worked alongside Kari Voutilainen – Vianney Halter and Christophe Claret.
"Stepan has an incredible sense of design and a real sense of detail. His work and everything he surrounds himself with is extremely coherent." Maximilian Büsser
- Available in three limited editions of 18 pieces each: natural titanium case with white gold moon faces and light blue sky, black titanium case with white gold moon faces and dark blue sky, and red gold case with red gold moon faces and anthracite sky.
- Indication domes configured perpendicular to wrist.
- Three-dimensional horological engine designed by Jean-Marc Wiederrecht/Agenhor; powered by a Sowind base, modified by Stepan Sarpaneva
- DLC coated and star-pieced steel and 22k gold automatic winding rotor
- Hour and minutes information transmitted via ceramic ball bearings to rotating domes.
- 319 components / 36 jewels
- Hour on one dome (aluminium dome rotating in 12 hours)
- Minutes on second dome (aluminium dome rotating in 60 minutes)
- Moon phase displayed by dual moons rotating under a Korona ring
Inspiration
HM3 Frog was chosen as the MoonMachine platform because the large movement opening in the dial side provides space for the watchmaker to play – and the bulbous indication domes of the Frog are reminiscent of how science fiction buffs have long imagined habitable domes on the Moon.
Based on Stepan’s own face, the phase of the moon is displayed through a signature Korona-shaped aperture, while the mystery winding rotor takes the form of a steel and 22k gold disc with laser-pierced of northern stars. In Stepan’s own words: “The visible movement of the original HM3 Frog added a technical aspect that provided a serious counterpoint to the playfulness of the bulging frog-eyed indications. In covering the movement, the moon phase and sky hides this and makes the timepiece more poetic. With MoonMachine, the HM3 Frog is transformed into a fairy tale.”
