If there is one word to describe Max Busser, I would use the word “Gentleman.” With a capital G.
I knew of him back when he was still at Harry Winston. When he left to start his own brand, I remember thinking he had a hard road ahead. Breaking into independent watchmaking was tough in the mid 2000s. Max was never a “trained” watchmaker. What he had was a sharp eye for design and a long list of people who trusted him. Pair that eye with the technical skill of his friends, and you get MB&F. Give credit where credit is due – just take a look at the hugely successful Opus series of Harry Winston Rare Timepieces that Max had started and you will understand the concept of MB&F.
His networking was legendary, and that is really why Maximilian Busser and Friends became a success. Max is a natural brand ambassador. Whether you buy from him or not, he makes the effort to remember your name. I met him once at an MB&F event hosted by The Hourglass in Singapore. He remembered my name after that. It also does not matter to him how you bought your MB&F piece. Direct from him, through an authorised dealer, or off the secondary market, you are still his customer. That is unusual in this industry. Plenty of brands quietly resent owners who bought pre-owned.
He is also a great storyteller, and that is a large part of why his watches land. There is always a story behind why he does what he does. Sometimes it is a napkin sketch at 30,000 feet. Sometimes it is a childhood memory turned into a timepiece. His design instincts trace back to the toys and objects of his childhood and youth. The Horological Machine series is his most playful and avant-garde expression of that. His Legacy Machine series, by contrast, is his take on deconstructing a classical timepiece. The first Legacy Machine was the LM101. The name gives it away: 101, the basics, the beating heart of a mechanical watch pulled to the front. I find the LM series more appealing personally. But if I had to pick one Horological Machine to own, it would be the HM2.
This article, though, is about the Horological Machines. MB&F was founded in July 2005. Max released the first Horological Machine, HM1, in 2007. Nineteen years and eleven machines later, HM12 arrived this year. Twelve numbered machines in nineteen years is not a bad run. In fact, it is nothing short of fantastic. This is a brand that still calls itself, without irony, a concept lab rather than a manufacture. Max calls his creations kinetic wrist sculptures instead of watches. Looking at any of them, it is hard to argue with him.
A few things about MB&F rarely make it into the fan writeups. Max built his reputation before MB&F while running the Opus program at Harry Winston. There he brought outside watchmakers like FP Journe in to collaborate, an unusual move for a jeweller at the time. That habit of pulling in outside talent became the entire premise of MB&F. The F literally stands for Friends. It is a rotating cast of watchmakers, designers and finishers who build each machine around Max's sketches. His longtime business partner, Serge Kriknoff, has run R&D and production since near the beginning. He rarely gets mentioned outside trade press, even though he turns Max's sketches into working calibres.
There is also a genuinely odd piece of trivia in the numbering. HM8 Can-Am was released in September 2016. HM7 Aquapod did not reach the market until 2017, a full year later. HM7 simply was not ready in time. MB&F let HM8 go first rather than delay the whole sequence. So the eighth machine came out before the seventh. In August 2024, Chanel bought a 25 percent stake in MB&F. Max kept 60 percent, and his partner Kriknoff kept 15. The deal was framed as a way to secure MB&F's independence, not sell it off. It followed similar Chanel stakes in FP Journe and Romain Gauthier. MB&F reported CHF 45.4 million in revenue in 2023, from just 419 watches. Its more accessible M.A.D.Editions line added roughly 3,500 pieces a year on top of that. Here is the lineup, machine by machine, roughly in the order they arrived.
HM1, 2007
HM1 was the founding statement. Two circles meet at its centre. One stands for Maximilian Busser, the other for his Friends, the specialists who helped build the concept. Those circles come together as a central one-minute Tourbillon. Hours and minutes sit on two separate dials on either side.
The movement runs on four mainspring barrels, wired in both parallel and series. That was a first for the industry.
This design cut strain on each spring while improving accuracy and longevity. It took 376 parts and 81 jewels to pull off. It set the tone for everything that followed, giving equal weight to engineering and to looks.
Two of Max’s good friends Peter Speake and Laurent Besse helped develop the HM1 and it was Peter Speake who later helped introduce independent watchmaker Stephen McDonnell who help create the LM Perpetual.
HM2, 2008
The most “regular” shaped HM. HM2 looked like something out of 1960s science fiction, and that was deliberate.
Max has said the modular construction was inspired by the Meccano sets he built as a kid. The case alone runs to over 100 components.
Twin dials show moonphase and date on the left, time on the right. It has jumping hours, retrograde minutes and a retrograde date together.
Nobody had combined those in one movement before. The rotor is MB&F's now-familiar battle-axe shape, cut from 22 carat gold. One blade measures just 0.2mm thick. This is the one I would put on my own wrist if I could only pick one MB&F HM.
HM3, 2009
Spaceship-inspired HM3 turned the usual watch layout inside out. Rather than hiding the automatic rotor at the back, MB&F flipped it to the top. The battle-axe rotor sits in full view as a result.
Two aluminium domes rise off the dial to show hours and minutes. They are machined paper thin to keep power consumption low.
At the back, ceramic bearings carry the load instead of a conventional pinion system. A pinion system would have created more friction and needed support on both sides. HM3 came in two versions, Sidewinder and Starcruiser, depending on how the side cones angle against the wrist.
In a later version released in 2010, the Frog (pictured here) was the new iteration.
HM4 Thunderbolt, 2010
The name Thunderbolt says it all. HM4 grew out of Max's childhood habit of building model aircraft, and it shows.
The case, reminiscent of the jet engine in aviation, sits perpendicular to the wrist. Twin shafts are capped by separate displays.
Power reserve sits on the left, hours and minutes on the right, each with its own crown. A sapphire window in the middle exposes the balance wheel. Two mainspring barrels run in parallel for 72 hours of reserve.
Power travels upward through a vertical gear train, using a technique MB&F calls renvoi d'angle. It was the first time that technique had been used in a flat movement. All 311 components were built specifically around this case, rather than adapted from something off the shelf.
HM5, 2012
One look and you know the inspiration for the HM5 – supercar of the 70s. Nicknamed “On the road again”, HM5 borrowed its wedge shape from 1970s muscle cars and the quartz-era watches that rode alongside them.
The bi-directional jumping hours mean you can set the time forwards or backwards without stress on the movement. What makes HM5 stand out is how it displays time. Two overlapping discs rotate horizontally on top of the movement.
Their numerals reflect vertically and magnify 20 percent through a triangular sapphire prism. It is part mechanical watch, part optics experiment. For this piece, the base movement was from Girard-Perregaux and the watch was developed with Jean-François Mojon.
HM6 Space Pirate, 2014
Heading back to space, HM6 traces back to Capitaine Flam, a 1970s French and Japanese cartoon. Its hero captains an improbably bulbous spaceship, and you can see the resemblance in the case.
HM6 carries MB&F's second Tourbillon, and its first Flying Tourbillon. It sits so high above the movement that it looks structurally impossible. A retractable titanium shield protects the Tourbillon's lubricant from direct sunlight.
Hours and minutes show on twin rotating spheres, milled almost to paper thinness. Conical gears move energy vertically through the case without losing precision.
Turbines on either side of the dials act as a winding buffer, keeping the automatic rotor from spinning too fast. Although this was not the first in-house calibre from MB&F R&D team, it was the first housed in an HM. The first in-house calibre actually was designed for the LM101.
HMX, 2015
Ten years since the founding of MB&F and HMX arrived to mark MB&F's the anniversary. Max made an unusual choice for the occasion. Rather than another six figure showpiece, he built the brand's most affordable machine.
It runs on a Sellita base rather than an in-house calibre. The mechanical digital display borrows from two rotating discs, one for bi-directional jumping hours, one for trailing minutes. Both project upward through sapphire prisms.
The supercar theme shows up in the rocker covers on top of the movement, complete with chrome oil filler caps. They actually unscrew, letting a watchmaker oil the bearings underneath. It is a nod to Max's childhood sketchbooks, said to be full of imaginary supercars.
HM7 Aquapod, 2017
Modelled after a jellyfish, HM7 is built around concentric rings resembling a jellyfish, which Max encountered on a family beach holiday.
Energy travels from curved tentacle-shaped winding weights at the bottom of the case.
It moves up to a central 60 second Flying Tourbillon at the top, through gears MB&F describes as stairs. Extra-large ceramic ball bearings support the rotating hour and minute rings to cut friction. The outermost ring works as a rotating bezel.
It sits past the edge of the case, so it appears to float free of the two crowns. Time setting and winding on the MB&F HM7 Aquapod are managed via two separate, symmetrical crowns located on either side of the case.
The crown located on the left side of the case (at 9 o’clock) is used to manually wind the movement. The crown located on the right side of the case (at 3 o’clock) is used to set the time. By now, you would have noticed that any HM is no ordinary timepiece. Even the time setting and winding mechanisms are different.
HM8 Can-Am, 2016
The avant-garde driver’s watch. HM8 is what happens when you combine two earlier machines.
MB&F has described it, half-jokingly, as HM3 plus HM5. It takes the battle-axe rotor from HM3 and the sapphire prism display from HM5. Both sit inside a case inspired by the Can-Am racing series of the 1960s and 70s.
Titanium roll bars, milled from solid blocks and mirror polished by hand, curve from front to back. They echo the safety cage on a period race car. As mentioned earlier, HM8 actually reached collectors a year before HM7, because HM7 was not ready in time.
While the HM8 used the Girard-Perregaux base for its movement, the module for this piece was an in-house developed.
HM9 Flow, 2018
The manual winding, 45 hours power-reserve HM9 took three years to develop, and came out looking like a retro-futuristic aircraft fuselage.
It draws on 1940s and 50s streamlined car and plane design. Twin balance wheels sit in pods on either side of the case.
Each is fully independent, visible under its own sapphire dome. A planetary differential in the centre averages the output from both wheels into one steady time reading. MB&F first tried this system in Legacy Machine No.2. HM9 launched in two versions: Air with an aviator dial, Road with a speedometer-style dial, 33 pieces of each.
For some odd reason, I keep thinking the HM9 resembles an insect – a firefly with its wings open to be exact. In any case, the movement for the HM9 was created entirely in-house. The two fully independent balance wheels operates on separate lateral pods, regulated by a central planetary differential ensures stable timekeeping.
HM10 Bulldog, 2020
The Bulldog HM10 is the most overtly animal of the lineup.
The case reads like a bulldog crouched on its haunches.
Two domed eyes handle hours and minutes. Stout articulated legs double as lugs. Underneath sits a set of hinged jaws that serve as the power reserve display. Wide open jaws with visible teeth mean the watch is fully wound.
As the 45 hour reserve runs down, the jaws slowly close. Above the dial floats a 14mm flying balance wheel on two arched bridges, standing in for the dog's brain. It is a manually wound movement, built from 301 components.
HM11 Architect, 2023
Doesn’t the HM11 remind you of Hobbiton from the Lord of the Rings? Maybe my imagination is going wild.
HM11 looks like a small house on the wrist, which is the point. A central Flying Tourbillon sits where a hearth would be.
Four symmetrical volumes reach out from it, each shaped like a parabolic room. One room shows the time, another the power reserve, another the temperature. The fourth holds the crown. The whole case rotates on its base, so the wearer chooses which room faces up.
Each 45 degree turn clicks into place and winds 72 minutes of power into the barrel. Ten full rotations bring HM11 to its maximum 96 hour reserve. The movement is fully in-house designed and developed by the MB&F R&D team.
HM12 The Guardian, 2026
After creating all the mechanical displays like the Arachnophobia and the Starfleet Machine done in collaboration with clock specialist L’Epée 1839, Max has done a transformer-type piece.
Enter HM12, the newest machine, and also the strangest premise MB&F has attempted. It is a wristwatch that doubles as the detachable head of a 38cm tall robot. The eyes show jumping hours on the left, trailing minutes on the right. The mouth holds half of the battle-axe rotor.
A Flying Tourbillon sits where the brain would be. A shield system, worked by the left crown, changes the face's colour and expression.
Flip it over and the back turns properly classical, with a guilloche dome finished alongside independent watchmaker Kari Voutilainen. MB&F is producing just 36 pieces across three colourways, and says no more will follow.
HM12 was originally planned around MB&F's 20th anniversary, but took longer to finish than expected. It now opens the brand's third decade instead. It also lands at a moment of change in MB&F's creative leadership, which is its own story.
Twelve numbered machines, one bonus edition in HMX, and not one of them looks like it was designed by committee. That is the real achievement. Watch brands talk about heritage and craftsmanship as if repeating the words often enough makes them true. Max just kept sketching napkins and finding friends who could build what he drew. Nineteen years on, the Horological Machines still look like nothing else on a wrist. That was always the whole point.
Thanks to The Hourglass for the invitation to the MB&F HM Exhibition GTG at the Raffles Hotel Boutique.
