MB&F Legacy Machine ‘Split Escapement’, a classical LM design
MB&F introduces a new limited edition of 33 pieces in grade 5 titanium, with a spectacular green CVD-treated dial. Share
There is one technical constant that defines every single watch in the MB&F Legacy Machine collection. Functions may vary, and different complications come to the fore in each edition, but the suspended balance wheel remains literally and metaphorically above everything else. In Legacy Machine Split Escapement, this feature is not only highlighted, but raised to another level of achievement. The sun-ray dial finish catches the light from alternating angles, constantly changing between blue and green hues – adding a more contemporary edition to the series.
MB&F debuted the Legacy Machine collection in 2011, the result of a radical thought experiment by founder Maximilian Büsser: “What would have happened if I had been born in 1867 instead of 1967? In the early 1900s the first wristwatches appear and I would want to create three-dimensional machines for the wrist. There are no Grendizers, Star Wars or fighter jets for my inspiration, but I do have pocket watches, the Eiffel Tower and Jules Verne. So what might my early 20th-century machines look like? They had to be round (tradition) and three-dimensional (MB&F Machine): Legacy Machines are the answer.”
Legacy Machine N°1 simultaneously marked a sharp departure from the Horological Machines for which MB&F was already known, and also established the aesthetic codes for a new family of MB&F creations. Round cases, white lacquer dials, movements classically finished with Geneva stripes and polished chamfers, and the one disruptive element — the suspended balance — all the more arresting because of its wholly traditional setting.
Since the double time-display LM1 was released, the Legacy Machine collection has been completed with five further series, making six in total. Legacy Machine N°2, with its two regulators, premiered in 2013. Legacy Machine 101, the distillation of the aesthetics of the Legacy Machine collection and MB&F’s first in-house movement, came a year later, and the high-complication Legacy Machine Perpetual arrived in 2015. In 2019 MB&F released the LM FlyingT featuring a flying tourbillon, and the first MB&F Machine dedicated to women.
The emphasis on technical creativity that characterised LM Perpetual also defines LM Split Escapement, whose engine is derived from LM Perpetual but has shed its complication to reveal the innovation at its heart. Despite the technical hurdles faced in creating the split escapement, the LM SE engine is still designed with aesthetics and classicism in mind — beautifully symmetrical, with bridges that frame their underlying components and curve smoothly around gold chatons and countersunk jewels.
