Outrageous HM6 Space Pirate lands in London
Announced to instant online acclaim on Tuesday, the latest “Horological Machine” from iconoclastic watchmaker MB&F will make its public debut today, at the SalonQP fine-watch show.
A genuine feather in the cap for the Saatchi Gallery showcase, into its sixth edition this year, the HM6 Space Pirate is the most ambitious unveiling yet from Max Büsser’s eponymous haute horologerie Friends collective. It has been four years in the pipeline and, yet again, turns on its head the notion of what a modern timepiece should be – in this case, a machine that happens to tell the time, rather than a machine to tell the time.
“It’s our most ambitious, crazy project to date,” says Büsser, whose knack for gathering the industry’s finest minds on far-out concepts began when he headed Harry Winston’s Rare Timepieces division in the mid-2000s. “The inspiration comes from one of my childhood souvenirs – a Japanese manga from the 1970s called Capitán Futuro, whose spaceship comprised two spheres connected by a cylinder – mixed with the fluid ‘biodesign’ of Luigi Colani.”
Limited to just 50 pieces, it certainly takes a captain of the future to pull this off, but for sheer chutzpah, Büsser et al must take full credit yet again. And you can chat it over with the man himself at SalonQP today (see overleaf).
mbandf.com