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The Watches

MB&F Launches Salmon-Hued LM Perpetual 

MB&F revisits its Legacy Machine Perpetual this week with a new model featuring a salmon-colored dial plate. The combination of a steel case and salmon hue is a first for MB&F, which will release the new model in limited production, not as a limited edition.

The MB&F Legacy Machine Perpetual with its new salmon-colored plate.

MB&F’s latest Legacy Machine Perpetual, which won the Best Calendar Watch prize at the GPHG (Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève) in 2016, offers the same groundbreaking, manual-wind LM Perpetual movement conceived by MB&F Friend Stephen McDonnell for the 2015 original.

That groundbreaking design means the Legacy Machine Perpetual will operate with no skipped dates or jammed gears. Owners often inadvertently create problems within their perpetual calendars by attempting to reset them while the gears are mid-function, resulting in some damage to the highly complex date mechanism.

McDonnell’s design is proactive in a sense because when the user attempts to adjust the calendar, the movement’s pushers automatically deactivate so they don’t cause any damage to other components.

At the heart of the difference is how the Legacy Machine Perpetual determines dates. Traditional perpetual calendars use a 31-day month as the default, changing, for example, from February 28 to March 1 quickly to arrive at the 1st. Interrupting the movement during this critical changeover can damage it. 

With this perpetual calendar movement, Busser and friends essentially replaced that traditional system with a mechanical processor that instead utilizes that default 28-day month and adds extra days only as required.

Three years go MB&F added a sporty version of the perpetual calendar when it launched the Legacy Machine Perpetual EVO, a zirconium-cased update to the original model.

This new model, with its premiere 44mm by 17.5mm steel case/salmon dial plate-color combination, is a handsome – and welcome – addition to the full collection of a true ground-breaking original.

Price: $180,000. 

 

Since its 2015 debut, the MB&F Legacy Machine Perpetual has been offered:

– in platinum 950 with blue face (limited to 25 pieces);

– in 18k red gold with grey face (limited to 25 pieces);

– in 18k white gold with purple face (limited to 25 pieces);

– in 18k white gold with dark grey face;

– in grade 5 titanium with green face (limited to 50 pieces);

– in 18k yellow gold with blue face (limited to 25 pieces);

– in palladium 950 with aquamarine face (limited to 25 pieces);

– in stainless steel with salmon face.

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The Watches

Armin Strom Blues its Mirrored Force Resonance

A year after pioneering independent watchmaker Armin Strom launched a redesigned, sleeker Mirrored Force Resonance, the Swiss-based manufacture launches a new version, the Mirrored Force Resonance Manufacture Edition Blue, sporting a specially textured blue dial and matching Alcantara strap.

The new Armin Strom Mirrored Force Resonance Manufacture Edition Blue.

The newest iteration of the watch, first introduced by Armin Strom in 2016, is still one of the few serialized watch designs boasting a resonance-based regulating system. The newest series is a limited edition of fifty pieces with new blue accents that serve to highlight the dial’s three-dimensional display.

The newly dark blue off-center dial matches the twin resonance second counters, both of which are also finished in the same blue tone and painted with white numerals. The open-worked seconds dials (with their triple-arm hands) can be reset to zero by the pusher at 2 o’clock.

Up-close on the new blue ‘grenage’ finish.

These newly colorful elements, unusual enough on any dial,  share the space with another component not seen on any other resonance-based construction: a one-piece steel Resonance Clutch Spring.

Armon Strom’s signature creation essentially transfers energy between both hairsprings and quickly brings the balance wheels into resonance.

Caliber ARF21, showing bas-relief engraved text on back.

This new watch maintains the design’s 43mm by 11.55 steel case and raised sapphire crystal. On the back Armin Strom has engraved — in bas-relief — the mainplate with technical details and characteristics of the Mirrored Force Resonance mechanism.

To completing the blue theme, Armin Strom delivers the Mirrored Force Resonance Manufacture Edition Blue on a matching dark blue Alcantara strap. 

Price: $63,000

Specifications: Armin Strom Mirrored Force Resonance Manufacture Edition Blue 

(Reference no. ST22-RF.05, limited to 50 pieces)

Movement: Armin Strom manufacture Caliber ARF21, manual winding with two independent regulating systems connected by a resonance clutch spring. Power reserve: 48 hours. 

Case: 43mm by 11.55m stainless steel, raised sapphire crystal and caseback with anti-reflective treatment. Water resistance to 30 meters.

Dial: Dark blue with grenage center and a circular satin-brushed chapter ring and applied polished baton indices. Hands: Steel, manufactured by Armin Strom, decorated by hand. 

Strap: Dark blue Alcantara with white stitching and double folding clasp in stainless steel.

Price: $63,000. 

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The Watches

Hublot Adds New Colors to MP-09 Tourbillon Bi-Axis Universe

Hublot expands its collection of eccentric MP-09 Tourbillon Bi-Axis 5 Days Power Reserve watches with three new color options, all of which use carbon and composites to reproduce the glittering effect of colored gemstones.

Hublot adds three new color options to its MP-09 Tourbillon Bi-Axis 5 Days Power Reserve collection.

Three new hues, orange, violet and white, join earlier editions with bright colors created through a clever use of colorful composite and carbon fibers braided within strong, lightweight carbon mesh.

Hublot has previously offered other single-color 3-D Carbon versions of the MP-09 and even devised a rainbow edition late last year.

Essentially, Hublot technicians have braided the 49mm carbon case, combining thin bars of carbon and bars of colored composite together and threading them into a mass that, eventually, is milled into a case.

 

Hublot’s existing MP-09 tourbillon caliber (HUB9009.H1.RA.B), which debuted in 2017, is a manually wound movement with a five-day power reserve. The caliber’s impressive bi-axial tourbillon makes one complete rotation per minute for the first axis and a second rotation every thirty seconds for the second axis.

The unusual case shape for the MP-09 Tourbillon Bi-Axis 5 Days Power Reserve derives from Hublot’s choice to design the shape to best display the tourbillon’s double rotation. Hence, the case frames the tourbillon at 6 o’clock with unique undulations, curves and multi-level edges.

Hublot offers eight watches in each of the three new colors. Each watch is priced at $200,000. 

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Featured News

Wempe Launches Two Ship Chronometers 

Wempe teams with British ship designer Tim Heywood to launch two new marine chronometers for yachts: The Wempe Marine Chronometer Cube by Tim Heywood and the Marine Chronometer Coco de Mer by Tim Heywood,

Wempe has made such instruments for seagoing vessels since 1905, and the new series adds a modern twist to the so-called ‘unified chronometers.’

The Wempe Marine Chronometer by Tim Heywood.

Heywood has equipped the two new clocks with large blue dials and contemporary typography. But perhaps the most revealing addition to the series are two openings at 4 and 8 o’clock that allow the ship’s captain and visitors a view of the Wempe Type 07 mechanical movement through the dial.

The new Wempe Marine Chronometer Coco de mer by Tim Heywood.

In addition, both new clocks are topped with highly domed clear borosilicate glass crystal. Twelve meridian lines radiate from the center of the glass and continue onto the wide, curved glass back.

Wempe notes that while the clock is turned over to be manually wound by key, the gimbal of the gold-plated brass case takes center stage and looks much like an abstract sculpture.

The movement offers a maximum rate variation of only 0.3 seconds per day while maintaining fifty-six hours of power reserve.

You’ll see an elaborate chain-and-fusée assembly through the clear case of each clock that ensures that the energy the mainspring feeds to the gear train remains constant.

The dark brown case of the Marine Chronometer Cube can be ceremonially opened using its three folding doors. The case for this model includes a gold-plated time zone map in the lid plus sixteen coats of varnishing and hand polishing. Price: $57,460. 

Heywood chose the curvy, feminine three-part case of the Marine Chronometer Coco de Mer in part because of the fact that ships are the only objects referred to using feminine pronouns in the English language.

Wempe explains that the case is also modeled after a coconut, which “can traverse enormous distances at sea unscathed, making it a perfect symbol for marine chronometry.”

Wempe coats the top of this model’s lid with bronze while the inside boasts gold leaf. Like its partner clock, the case is coated with sixteen layers of varnish. This marine chronometer is limited to fifty numbered pieces. Price: $91,825. 

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The Watches

Bell & Ross Bronzes its Cyber Skull 

Bell & Ross adds a new watch to its Skull collection with the BR 01 Cyber Skull Bronze, an updated edition of the contemporary design made with sharper edges and more light-reflecting facets.

The new Bell & Ross BR 01 Cyber Skull Bronze.

The new watch echoes the now sold-out 2020 Cyber Skull, but with an avant-garde twist that combines ceramic, sapphire crystal and bronze. Its gold-colored skull tops a Bell & Ross BR-CAL.210 manual-wind automaton caliber. When the wearer turns the crown, the jawbone moves as if the skull is speaking.

The skull itself is inserted between two sapphire crystal plates as if floating in the center of the 45mm x 46.7mm case.

Held with four femur-shaped supports, the skull covers much of the skeletonized movement. However, as with the earlier Cyber Skull model, the watch’s balance wheel becomes the visible ‘brains’ of the skull while a few winding gears remain in sight on the dial side. Most of the finely-cut movement is fully visible via the watch’s clear sapphire back.

Bell & Ross notes that as a bronze-cased watch, its appearance will change slightly as it is worn and develops a patina. This means each piece of the 500-piece limited edition will take on a unique bronze tone, depending on the wearer’s own body chemistry.

The new watch continues a long-running Bell & Ross concept that started in 2009 with the BR 01 Skull. The watchmaker has introduced several BR 01 Skull and BR 01 Laughing Skull models in the years since, including a bronze BR 01 Skull in 2015. A year later, Bell & Ross added a tourbillon to the BR 01 Skull Bronze in a unique-piece that sold during the Only Watch charity watch auction that year. In 2017, Bell & Ross introduced its first 3D skull with the BR 01 Burning Skull Bronze. 

Bell & Ross is making the BR 01 Cyber Skull Bronze as a limited edition of 500 pieces. Price: $11,400.

 

Specifications: Bell & Ross BR 01 Cyber Skull Bronze 

Movement: Manufacture BR-CAL.210 hand-wound mechanical. 

Functions: hours and minutes. Moving skull jawbone when wound by hand. 

Case: 45 mm x 46.7 mm. 13.70 mm thick. Satin-finished and polished CuSn8 bronze. Sapphire and CuAI7Si2 bronze caseback. 

Dial: Skeletonized. Rose gold-plated brass skull (or bronze-colored skull). Gilt metal skeletonized SuperLumiNova- filled hour and minute hands. Balance at 12 o’clock. Sapphire crystal; water resistant to 50 meters. 

Strap: Black rubber with satin-finished and polished CuAI7Si2 bronze pin.  

Price: $11,400. 

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