MB&F has already delivered many of the Swiss watch industry’s most original aesthetics over its first 20 years within its radical Horological Machines and slightly more conformist Legacy Machines families, with friends of the brand eagerly awaiting every new HM or LM drop.
Now the Max Busser business appears to want a third vessel for its creativity, and has signalled it will develop a series under a new Special Project banner.
The first watch is the Special Project One, or SP One, which is described as sitting somewhere between MB&F’s HM and LM codes, is a smaller, more minimalist and slimmer dress watch than the brand has ever made.
Its design would easily qualify as a 12th Legacy Machine with its exposed oversized balance wheel and jauntily tilted dial borrowing architectural similarities with the LM101.
But the complete skeletonization of the movement, to the extent that it appears to float between the watch’s clear front and back, does have echoes of the way crystal is used as a sculptural container in some of the Horological Machines.
The hand-wound SP One was originally codenamed Three Circles because of the arrangement of its balance wheel, barrel and dial, which appear to almost float underneath domed crystal, but are connected by bridges to anthracite or sky blue flanges.
At 38mm across, the watch is smaller than is normal for MB&F’s creations, it is also towards the lower end of its price range with a rose gold version costing $76,000 and a platinum piece $6,000 more at $82,000+tax.
Platinum may be three-times cheaper than gold right now, but it is harder, and therefore more expensive, to work with, MB&F reminds us.
The watch is all about understated elegance and came from a process to craft a watch that “whispered sophistication instead of shouting for attention”, the brand says.
The new 191-component in house movement pulses at 4Hz and will keep running for three days without winding using the crown at 10 o’clock.
With nowhere to hide, the movement needed every bit of MB&F’s famously ambitious hand-finishing, and delivers with a combination of polished, satin and micro-blasted surfaces.
