Back to the Future

Traditional but not quite, the MB&F Legacy Machines are a perfect counterpoint to the brand’s Horological Machines, writes Jamie Tan

n the 12 years following its establishment, MB&F has grown into what founder Maximilian Büsser recently described as a “comfortable size”. The brand isn’t a novice anymore, yet it doesn’t sit at the big boys’ table either. Rather, it straddles the middle ground comfortably scale-wise, to reap the benefits of both worlds. On one hand, it is large enough to avoid the hand-wringing that comes with a tiny operation’s tight margins and weak balance sheet—as Büsser himself initially experienced. On the other, the brand remains small enough to be nimble and, more importantly, to be free from the shackles of market expectations. The Legacy Machines (LM) collection quite appropriately embodies the comfortable zone that MB&F is in. Büsser had wondered about what he would have created in the early 1900s, had he been born a century earlier. The Legacy Machines were his experiments— and answer. Launched in 2011, the line was an immediate contrast to the “main” Horological Machines (HM) collection’s avant-garde models. The LMS look traditional enough—at least at first glance—thanks to their round cases that clearly resembled classic watches, unlike the HMS’ complex sculptures. Examine them a little more closely, however, and they are anything but; the LMS carry MB&F’S DNA within them, albeit in a different guise.