Dear Friends,

I hope you enjoyed a relaxing, regenerating summer. Our team is back at work preparing an intense autumn and winter: we’re looking at no less than 4 launches in the remaining 4 months of the year, including two new artists at the M.A.D.Gallery and two new timepieces.

On the watchmaking front, this newsletter focuses on the third episode of our Legacy Machine saga: LM101.

You may remember our first two Legacy Machines: LM1, which introduced the new traditionally-inspired line in 2011, and LM2 which was presented last year. A few months ago we followed with Legacy Machine 101, but the piece is not a sequel… it is in fact a “prequel” – the piece which we could have started with. Prequel? According to Wictionary, a prequel is “most often used (…) to refer to works that are chronologically before but are created and released after; an archetypal example is the Star Wars prequel trilogy”.

LM101 is indeed the Legacy saga’s prequel because it is the most essential Legacy Machine; the purest, most fundamental expression of the line. It captures the essence of mechanical watchmaking by boiling everything down to the bare essentials: first and foremost, the regulating system with its oversized, slowly-beating “flying” balance wheel. Second, the time – just two blued-gold hands for the hours and minutes on a stark white subdial. And last but not least, the power reserve indicator on a second subdial.

This is undoubtedly our most classic, simplest Legacy Machine – but I assure you it was a challenging exercise, on one hand because simplifying is often more difficult than adding complications, especially when you have less space to play: the LM101 case is a very classic 40mm, compared to the 44mm cases of LM1 and LM2.

LM101 was also a challenge because it houses our first in-house movement… and that deserves a bit of an explanation. From the very beginning, we’ve developed movements specifically for MB&F, with the help of third-party engineers: Friends like Jean-Marc Wiederrecht and Jean-François Mojon. The LM101 calibre was however entirely conceived in-house by our own engineering team.

Don’t get me wrong: our in-house talent gives us additional options and flexibility, but it does not imply a change in our business model. We will continue to develop our Machines with external Friends, because this gives us additional creativity and allows us to enrol the very best talent for each specific project. Among the many Friends who made LM101 happen, I’ll mention Kari Voutilainen who has ensured once again that the aesthetics of the movement and level of finishing pay tribute to our Horological ancestors. This is why you’ll see “MB&F with K. Voutilainen” hand-engraved on each LM101 movement.

While we’re on the subject, Legacy Machine 101 illustrates the significant investments we’ve made at MB&F in R&D and manufacturing. As mentioned, we can now count on our own engineering talent, with not just one but two in-house engineers. Our workshop has also grown since we’ve hired two additional watchmakers. And last but not least, at the beginning of this year we installed a machining centre including a 4-axis CNC machine, which facilitates prototyping and allows us to manufacture certain parts when needed.

The manufacturing team reports to our Chief Technology Officer Serge Kriknoff, who has been my partner in the company since 2008.

In our previous newsletter, I mentioned that our M.A.D.Gallery was thriving, with more than a thousand art pieces sold and 14,000 visitors welcomed. Those art pieces were purchased by customers from around the world, either during their visits to Geneva (and now Taipei), or thanks to contacts via the web. To make those digital customers’ lives a bit easier, we have just launched our M.A.D.Gallery eShop.

You’ll find a selection of art and design pieces online: one of my favourites is the magnificent art book ‘American Trucks’ published with Swiss photographer Ulysse Fréchelin. Also available are Laikingland’s kinetic objects or Böhm-Stirling’s hot air engines. One of the most successful art creations we recently presented was ‘Apesanteur’ by Quentin Carnaille… after a first series which sold out in a few months, we are proud to present ‘Apesanteur 2’, on show exclusively at the M.A.D.Gallery.

For the more daring, you will also find on the eShop the just-released table clock ‘Starfleet Machine’ or the ‘MusicMachine 2’ music box…

In Greek mythology, Atlas carried around a celestial sphere on his shoulders, struggling to hold it up on his own. This titan might have learned a useful lesson in teamwork had he looked more closely at the ground and observed ants. That is because nothing exemplifies teamwork quite like ants do; these so-called ‘social insects’ really know how to work together.

Disney Research has done exactly that, transposing the behaviour of social insects to a team of tiny, cooperative robots named Pixelbots. These colour-changing micro-machines can be pre-programmed to fall into formation and move around to form neat motifs or play out delightful scenes; or humans can manipulate them in real time using handheld tablets for interactive, animated entertainment including augmented reality games.

Find out more about Pixelbots on our weekly blog, A Parallel World.

I look forward to seeing and hearing from you during these last months of 2014. From one newsletter to the next our social media accounts continue to grow – especially our Instagram community which has almost doubled again, to over 45,000 followers. Please do join the action and stay in touch!

Very best regards,

Maximilian Büsser
Owner & Creative Director