These next-level craftsmen revere horology’s glorious past but are intent on taking mechanical watchmaking well into the new millennium
Imagine a contemporary automaker that prided itself on the fact its cars are built the same way today as they were 100 years ago. They look virtually the same and work pretty much the same way. You even have to physically crank the motor to get them started.
Would you be seduced by the brand’s marketing materials trumpeting “time-honoured craftsmanship” and “traditional artisanal skills?” Would you be beguiled by the old-world charm of the product’s throwback design, its antiquated engineering and heavy-metal construction? Or would you instead choose a more efficient, safe, reliable automobile made with the latest technology and materials?
Precious few motorists—and they’d doubtless mostly be beardy, basement-dwelling eccentrics—would select a jalopy from the luddite carmaker described above. Yet its product proposition closely resembles that of countless successful watchmakers selling very respectable numbers today.
In the 21st century, when we can instead learn the time, and any other piece of information a traditional watch is capable of displaying, via myriad other means (including quartz or smartwatches, computers, mobile phones and tablets), mechanical watchmaking could easily be viewed as an anachronism, a relic of a bygone era.
But the undeniable fact is, we do still find “time-honoured craftsmanship” and “traditional artisanal skills” attractive and worthy of support (thank heavens for that). And even if chips, blips and batteries can enable a watch to perform its tasks more efficiently, we are still intrigued by the intricate workings of a mechanical movement. One needn’t be Amish about it, though, and insist things are done exactly as they were a century or more ago. It is possible to combine the best of now and then, as the forward-thinking watchmakers that are our focus here so ably demonstrate.
The Artistry of Time
Maximilian Büsser, whose initials supply the first two letters of MB&F (Max Büsser & Friends), describes timekeeping as an incidental function of his company’s watches and clocks. These are, he says, “objects which give time, yet which are not intended as objects that give time.” Instead, MB&F’s goal is to re-engineer traditional horology and craft machines that would more accurately be described as kinetic artworks.
This is not unlike Singer Reimagined, which is a concept executed by two friends who wanted to explore the world of high watchmaking. Its Track 1, for example, is a radical re-engineering of the chronograph made possible by the Agengraphe, which allows for a centralised indication of the timepiece’s chronograph functions.