People think they know what to expect when it comes to an MB&F watch. And in a sense, they’re right. You can always count on being surprised, for one thing. You can always expect to see Max Büsser, founder and creative centre of the brand, take a slice of his personal history and turn it into something that universally resonates with his audience. What you don’t know is what exactly that’s going to be.
The first MB&F Horological Machine represented the message of the brand — two enormous round dials with a tourbillon in the middle, symbolising the dual spheres of Max Büsser (the “MB”) and his Friends (the “F”) that were linked by the same heart and passion for creative watchmaking. The brand then left tourbillons behind for a while, opting for the path of expressing ideas and tapping into cultural experiences rather than that of ultra-precise chronometry and mechanical complications.
Rumblings of the brand’s eventual return to traditional complications and tourbillons came about with the launch of Legacy Machine Perpetual and Horological Machine N°6, but the true storm of disruptive design and horological innovation hit us in December 2019, with Legacy Machine Thunderdome.
A triple-axis rotating escapement (technically NOT a tourbillon, trust me on this, so stop calling it that) towers over an ocean-blue guilloché dial plate, its cinematic energy barely contained by a massive hemisphere of sapphire crystal. Enabling the mechanism’s blazing-fast speeds — 8 seconds per rotation for the innermost axis, 12 seconds for the intermediate axis and 20 seconds for the outermost axis — is a rare form of escapement, named after 19th-century inventor and horologist Albert H. Potter. The engine of LM Thunderdome is the joint effort of Kari Voutilainen (perfectionist watchmaker known for exquisite movement finish and his esoteric take on Abraham-Louis Breguet’s natural escapement) and Eric Coudray (known as the unorthodox Einstein of modern watchmaking and creator of the original triple-axis tourbillon wristwatch). Their coming together marks one of the most significant collaborations of watchmaking this century.
Fans of MB&F have compared their first experience with the brand to being struck by lightning, like a St-Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus type of blinding, world-changing conversion. One of the most polarising creations from the brand (a piece which also happens to attract the most fervent adoration) is the HM4, also known as Thunderbolt. According to Büsser, HM4 delivers a “coup de foudre” — appropriate for a watch whose design was influenced by supersonic jet engines, and whose presence is known to make grown men weak in the knees. Clearly, any journey through the land of MB&F is an off-road adventure that should only be undertaken with caution and a full meteorological report. In other words, bring an umbrella.
Legacy Machine Thunderdome available on M.A.D Gallery.
