RAYMOND WEIL
FREELANCER DAVID BOWIE
IN ADDITION TO TIMELY TRIBUTES to the Beatles, Les Paul and Buddy Holly, Raymond Weil debuted a watch honors the memory of David Bowie in collaboration with the David Bowie Estate. The Freelancer David Bowie watch honor the influential musician in time for what would have been his 70th birthday. The watch’ s 42mm case features a dial with grooves that mimic a vinyl record, plus the red lightning bolt from the cover of his 1973 album, Aladdin Sane, and the red Bowie logo from the Diamond Dogs album from 1974. The 3,000-piece, limited and numbered series of automatic watches also feature a portrait of David Bowie on its sapphire caseback as shot by photographer Terry O’ Neill.
MB & F DESTINATION MOON
BY MICHAEL THOMPSON
DISAPPOINTED AT THE MUNDANE CYLINDERS that have defined so many genuine rockets in the decades since the imaginary crafts of the 1960s science finction, Busser and his Friends at frequent collaborator L’ Epée 1839 this year at Baselworld launched their own rocket.
Called Destination Moon, the MB & F horological rocket stands about sixteen inches tall and features an engine developed by L’ Epée to mimic the basic design of a real spaceship, or at least to look like a spaceship imagined by a youth in the 1960s.
The concept originated with L’ Epée movement designer and sci-fi rocket fan Nicolas Bringuet, who came up with the idea for the movement’ s distinctive vertical architecture. To mine childhood fantasies just a bit further, L’ Epee even made the movement’ s horizontal circular plates perforated just as components in a Meccano set( similar to an Erector set), according to MB & F.
The movement is made of more than 237 components with a lateral balance wheel and escapement, all in motion to display hours and minutes on two revolving rings. A small panel of clear mineral glass protects the impressively large regulator, with its 18,000-vph balance.
BIG CROWN Destination Moon’ s clock is powered when the owner winds what is essentially an oversized crown, which MB & F calls a thruster, at the rocket’ s base, delivering eight days of power reserve. Another crown at the top of the mechanism allows to the owner to quickly set the time. MB & F has even created a steel and silver astronaut, appropriately named Neil, who can be removed or placed back on the ladder thanks to an integrated magnet. Destination Moon is heavy, weighing nearly nine pounds, so that it will be a chore to tip it over too easily. The new rocket is MB & F’ s tenth co-creation in the past five years. Recall that the firm made three music boxes with Reuge, an Astrograph pen created with Caran d’ Ache last year and five previous table clocks created with Swissbased L’ Epée 1839. The Destination Moon horological rocket is available in four limited editions of fifty pieces each in black, green, and blue PVD, plus palladium( silver). Price: 19,900 Swiss francs( about $ 20,000).
SUMMER 2017 | INTERNATIONAL WATCH | 137