I have been a fan of John Le Carré for many decades (I still have my mother's heavily annotated, in her own hand, in green fountain pen ink, first edition of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy). One of my favorites is The Secret Pilgrim, which is a series of vignettes from the life mostly covert, of one George Smiley, OBE, one-time member and occasional reluctant chief of MI6. The book is the inside story of the sordid world of Cold War, and post-Cold War, intelligence but it's a reveal of a world quite difficult, if not impossible, for outsiders to unravel.
In modern fine watchmaking, we have something of a similar problem. The Brands, bless 'em, would sometimes prefer us to remember the Brands and not the people who made them what they are. Our problem, however, is not deliberate secrecy, but simply short memories, and a preoccupation with the new to the extent that we forget even the recent past.
There are, however, people among us who still remember and can still talk about what it was like when Jaeger-LeCoultre could barely sell a Reverso at all, much less make money on them, and who remember the names of individuals who, though they're not mentioned much these days, were some of the most important founders of today's fine watchmaking world. I present to you the tale of the progress of one engineer, watchmaker (though he insists he is not one), and one of the main architects of the notion of fine watchmaking not as the rote reiteration of past triumphs, but rather the invention of unforeseen ideas. Presented for your consideration, the life and career, told in watches, of one Maximilian Büsser – who remembers things which increasingly, we should, and do not.
Ebel Chronograph
This Ebel chronograph was Max's dream watch, but it came to him under very trying circumstances – it was a present to himself after a very bad accident during his military service, which laid him up for weeks. The watch has an El Primero movement but to Max, back in 1990, it was the last word in cool, as he says. It's easy to forget now, but there was a time when Ebel was one of the biggest names in Swiss watchmaking, and although the company is not, at least for now, seated at its former place at the high table of watchmaking, three decades ago it was a most prestigious brand indeed – a time when anyone who cared anything at all about watches knew what brand was called, "The Architects Of Time."
Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Grande Taille
We don't use the term "making your bones" in the watch industry but if we did, Jaeger-LeCoultre would be where Max made his. Fresh out of engineering school, through a series of chances (including a chance meeting while on a skiing trip) Max ended up, somewhat to his own surprise, taking on a job under Jean Henri Belmont, in 1991. This Reverso was the watch Max wore for most of his time at JLC and it represents a time when the Reverso, which we now think of as the single most iconic product made by JLC, was then only a fraction of the business and, in fact, says Max, they lost money on every one they sold. What a difference thirty years makes.
Ikepod Megapode
In 1994, Oliver Ike and Marc Newson founded Ikepod. The company made a name for itself producing what Max describes as a "pebble-shaped" case, which completely redefined the design language of watchmaking. This Megapode chronograph was a very radical departure from the then-typical men's dress watch code, not only in design terms but also in terms of size; it's 46.8mm in diameter and over 16mm thick and made of titanium to boot. The company was very much ahead of its time, but to Max, the Megapode represents an inflection point not only in modern watch design, but in the development of his own vision for watchmaking.
Harry Winston Ocean Chronograph
In 1998, Max joined Harry Winston, at the age of 31. Max says that he chose this watch to represent the next generation of sports watches at Harry Winston, and for the design, he enlisted the help of none other than Emmanuel Gueit, the designer of the Royal Oak Offshore. The Ocean Chronograph was, for the time, a quite crazy project (as was the Offshore, for that matter) – it's a triple retrograde chronograph, with an F. Piguet 1185 base and a triple retrograde module on top, designed by the renowned movement constructor, independent watchmaker, and complications specialist Jean-Marc Wiederrecht, whose work you've seen in everything from Van Cleef & Arpels, to Hermès. It's a snapshot of a moment in time when the sort of audacity in design presaged by the Ikepod was just beginning to become more mainstream and more widely accepted, and Wiederrecht – as well as Max, who would go on to develop the Opus series for Harry Winston – were two of its most important architects.
MB&F HM4
With the Horological Machine No. 4, we're up to 2010 and a watch that might surprise you as Max's pick to represent MB&F during that period. The previous Horological Machines had each presented their own challenges but HM4, in addition to being (as usual) way off the beaten pathway in terms of watch design, also presented an interesting engineering challenge, in that the movement plate and balance are at right angles to the displays for the time and power reserve. The watch was a hit commercially, as well, and a further confirmation to Max that his particular vision for watch design really resonated with collectors.
Voutilainen Vingt-8
Independent watchmaker Kari Voutilainen and Max Büsser don't seem at first glance as if they'd have a whole heck of a lot in common – the former is one of the greatest modern mandarins of the art of classic watchmaking and classic watch finishing, and the latter is the perpetual enfant terrible of watch design. And yet, they've worked together many times, with projects including the Legacy Machines 1 and 2, LM 101, and the Thunderdome. The Vingt-8 came to Max in a very interesting way (no spoilers but it's in the video and it's a great story) and it represents not only a professional partnership but a high degree of mutual respect and deep friendship, as well.
MB&F LM Perpetual
The Legacy Machine Perpetual Calendar is another example of a collaboration at MB&F – this time, the movement constructor was Stephen McDonald, the designer was Eric Giroud, and finish was by none other than Kari Voutilainen. The LMQP (if I may impose an acronym on it) first came out in 2015 and it's full of not only the neoclassical beauty that characterizes the Legacy Machines (as opposed to the more directly disruptive designs of the Horological Machines). It's a very technically unusual perpetual calendar on a number of levels – probably the most significant is that while virtually all other perpetual calendars take a 31-day month as the default length, and mechanically subtract days as needed, McDonald's design begins with a default month of 28 days, and adds numbers as needed.
Alain Silberstein Window
Alain Silberstein is an independent watchmaker and designer whose use of playful shapes and colors contributed significantly to opening up the constrained, conservative language of fine watchmaking in the 1990s and 2000s. His most recent project is a collaboration with clockmaker Philippe LeBru – a large, weight-driven pendulum floor clock. The Window watch you see here was a limited edition starting in 1999, in two series of ten pieces each, and the watch and design stuck with Max and became part of the inspiration for a project which only much more recently saw the light of day. The Window watch gets its name from the fact that there's no dial – instead, the hours and minutes are read off a rotating cylinder, visible between the lugs at 6:00. And yes, the hieroglyphs on top mean something.
MB&F HM10 'Bulldog'
It is to merely state the obvious to say that the Horological Machines can be polarizing, and I've heard my own fair share of both love and loathing for the Horological Machine No. 10 Bulldog. This is the most recent Horological Machine Max showed us and he describes it as something like an MB&F Greatest Hits album – you have the flying balance, the extremely unusual case shape, the "Bulldog's Jaw" power reserve, and the rotating domes for telling the time first seen on the HM3 Frog. It's a mature summing-up of everywhere MB&F has been, but also a fresh new statement of purpose on where it hopes to go in the coming years.
Seiko 'Discus Burger'
Somewhere around 2008 (when there were some interesting things happening in the world of international finance, as you may or may not remember), this Japan-only Seiko came out which, for absolutely no reason except that someone thought it was cool, told the time on three concentric rotating disks. This watch was not exactly easy to get, although it wasn't the price that was the obstacle – you just had to somehow source it from someone in Japan or a Japan-based retailer willing to ship overseas. To Max, this one was another nudge in the direction that ultimately led to the last and most recent watch we talked about – a reminder that while making half-million-dollar art pieces lets you really stretch in every way you want to – mechanically and aesthetically – making something your friends and family can actually own and wear isn't a bad thing to shoot for, either.
M.A.D. 1
This is the M.A.D. 1 – and if you have not been living under a rock, horologically speaking, you've seen it and been, depending on who you are, either elated that it exists, tickled pink to be one of the few who can get one, uncaring if this isn't your particular brand of vodka (like everything else MB&F does, it's not for everyone nor is it intended to be), or deeply resentful about the fact that you like it a lot, that it's theoretically pretty affordable, but you can't get one anyway. Well, there's some good news for you for 2022. You can easily see the many, many design antecedents to the M.A.D. 1 in some of the preceding watches – the Seiko and the Silberstein, to pick just two. A reminder that in the all-too-often deadly serious (and therefore, deadly dull) world of fine watchmaking, that perhaps we should all try to have a little fun in life once in a while.
The HODINKEE Shop is an authorized retailer for Seiko; explore the collection here. For more information regarding Jaeger-LeCoultre and MB&F, visit their websites.
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