Dear Friends,

It’s been a few months since our last newsletter – sorry about that, we’ve been even busier than usual! To start with, all hands were on deck during the two most important watch fairs of the year: the Geneva Wonder Week in January and Baselworld in March. If you were in Basel you may have spotted our redesigned, spacious new booth, which allowed us to comfortably welcome more than 500 retail partners, journalists and suppliers.

During the past few months we also worked our way through half a dozen introductions, including timepieces of course (like the LM1 Xia Hang featured here), plus the various artists we put on show at the MB&F M.A.D.Gallery. The team has grown to over 20 now, but for some inexplicable reason it seems we’re always rushing around frantically… a very strange phenomenon. Maybe we just like it that way :)

As you may remember, the original Legacy Machine N°1 (LM1) was launched at the end of 2011. A direct homage to classic watchmaking, it was a big break from our very unconventional Horological Machines. Fortunately for us, it also became an instant success, winning several awards including Best Men’s Watch as well as the Public Prize in the 2012 Geneva Watchmaking Grand Prix.

I’m particularly fond of this new LM1 limited edition, for two reasons: first of all, because it illustrates the fertile links between our core – watchmaking – and our M.A.D.Gallery. For this new ‘Performance Art’ piece, the LM1 gets an artistic injection from one of the gallery artists we have been showcasing since the very beginning: Xia Hang, a young, contemporary artist whom I met in Beijing.

I also like this new LM1 edition because it illustrates a strong, emotional metaphor which goes back to my early days in watchmaking at Jaeger-LeCoultre. At the time we were desperately trying to sell manually-winding watches like the Reverso when everyone wanted quartz movements… We would attempt to convince customers by telling them that when you wind a mechanical watch, you engage with it; you pump energy into the mechanism. In other words, you breathe life into it.

Pushing that analogy further, we’ve asked Xia Hang to place a little creature on the dial of Legacy Machine N°1: one of his so-called “comma men”, part-alien, part-baby. When you wind the LM1 Xia Hang, you literally breathe life into it and the creature rises, full of energy. As the 45-hour power reserve diminishes, the little man bends his back and gradually slumps over… he’s exhausted and it’s time to breathe life back into him!

Miniaturising and articulating one of Xia Hang’s creatures was a technical and artistic challenge. We chose aluminium for its light weight but also for its appearance: after milling the three components from a solid block of aluminium, they are polished and the result is very close to Xia Hang’s chrome-plated stainless steel sculptures. Each little creature is then finished by hand… Pull out your magnifying glass to see the fine detailing on these micro-sculptures, just 4mm high!

The LM1 Xia Hang is offered in two limited editions of 12 pieces each, in red or white gold. Each timepiece is delivered with a larger-scale pair of creatures – “Mr. Up” and “Mr. Down” – crafted out of solid steel and signed by Xia Hang himself. Read the full story about this artistic collaboration on our website.

When we created the M.A.D.Gallery back in late 2011, we had one concern: beyond our initial selection of artists and art works, would we be able to find enough new material to keep the gallery vibrant and interesting? Two years later the M.A.D.Gallery is thriving: we have represented dozens of artists, sold over a thousand art pieces and welcomed more than 14,000 visitors.

We continue to invest lots of time and effort into discovering amazing new creators, but finding sufficient talent is no longer a major concern – it was therefore time to rethink a radically different website. You’ll now find all the information related to each specific artist consolidated into a single, complete section: the artists’ bio, their artistic approach, the work on show at the M.A.D.Gallery… Please have a look and don’t hesitate to tell us what you think!

In our previous newsletter, I was proud to announce that our Instagram account had reached 12,000 followers. Guess what: in a few months, it’s more than doubled again. We’re approaching 28,000 followers as I write this… pretty amazing if you think that our Instagram presence was inexistent a year ago. We’ve obviously posted quite a few pics of our own – just under 200 in fact – but the even better part about Instagram is the interactivity: hundreds of watch enthusiasts have posted more than 2,300 pics of our Machines, which have been tagged #mbandf. We also have a growing M.A.D.Gallery account which you should have a look at. I look forward to seeing you online :)

How do you express your alternative taste in music when mainstream pop icons like Miley Cyrus and Harry Styles are out and about wearing Iron Maiden and Ramones t-shirts? The answer might lie in smart fabrics such as Chromosonic.

Developed by Budapest-based designer Judit Eszter Karpati, Chromosonic combines heat-sensitive dyes, nichrome wires, computer programming and a micro-controller to create a textile that comes alive to music. As sound passes through the wires, they heat up and activate the dye in the fabric, triggering different patterns and colours.

This textile technology opens up the future possibility of letting others know what is on your cool iPod playlist – not by the name of the band on your t-shirt, but by your t-shirt’s ever-changing appearance.

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

Dear Friends, you can expect more frequent newsletters in the months ahead. Rest assured, the creative pipelines are full, both on the timepiece and M.A.D.Gallery fronts… so we have no excuse to not keep you regularly informed. You know we also love your feedback so please do stay in touch!

Very best regards,

Maximilian Büsser
Owner & Creative Director