MB&F Continue Their Literary Adventure With Uniquely Engraved LM…

MB&F have continued their literary journey working with Master Engraver Eddy Jaquet for the latest series inspired by eight famous novels.

MB&F decided to continue with the literary inspiration for a second series and presented Eddy with a list of 15 famous novels in the young fiction category, of which he was to choose eight works. Rediscovering the pages of each story over the following weeks and months, he finally made his selection, as follows:

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
The Call of the Wild by Jack London
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Robin Hood (anonymous)

Like the first Jules Verne series, none of the illustrations imagined by Jaquet are drawn from existing works of art. They are entirely conceived by the artist after reading the source books and viewing other creative works, such as films and comic books. Each engraving is an intricate tableau of scenes and key moments from the stories, synthesised in the imagination of Jaquet and expressly designed to be interpreted through the medium of the LM SE movement.

The timepieces in this second series come in stainless steel cases that have been paired with black subdials on a white gold base plate, framing Jaquet’s intricate engravings and bringing these treasured literary classics to life. Each timepiece is also presented with an original drawing signed by Jaquet, together with a Loupe System X6 macro lens, allowing each new owner to enter a whole new level of discovery.

For each unique piece, Eddy Jaquet has chosen novels that brought back memories from his own childhood. After rediscovering them anew, he created his own original sketches on templates of the dial plate, each one telling a story, sometimes from a whole chapter and other times from a simple paragraph. In The Jungle Book, Jaquet has created a scene with all the main characters, centred around Mowgli curled up in Rama’s paws and Raksha, Bagheera, Baloo and Shere Khan keeping guard. In Treasure Island, however, the scene of Jim jumping from the boat and escaping from the pirates was based on just two sentences from the novel.

Even if the size of the final work can be measured in a diameter of only about 40mm, this doesn’t take away any of the detail from the story. Each picture has been created in the exact same way as an artist would paint a scene on a large canvas, the only difference being that the paintbrush has been replaced by the engraver’s chisel.

Jaquet has approached this new series slightly differently from the Jules Verne editions by making the heroes of each novel the focus of each illustration. The characters are often depicted sitting or kneeling down in the foreground of the dial at six o’clock so that the rest of the scene can be developed above them. Some of the figures are so small that Jaquet needed to include as much detail as possible to bring them to life. In The Three Musketeers, the scene reveals 10 young men in a sword fight with two tiny figures on the balcony in the most intricate detail. Another example can be discovered in The Last of the Mohicans, where three minuscule figures sit around a campfire.

These details cannot be perceived with the naked eye but reveal themselves to the viewer under a loupe, creating a whole other level of appreciation. Each timepiece comes with the artist’s initial drawing so that the watch’s owner can truly appreciate the complexity of transferring ideas from a large, two-dimensional piece of paper onto a watch’s dial in three-dimensional relief.

When you think about it, it is a little like discovering these novels themselves. It starts with the book’s cover, then continues with the blurb on the back, ending with total immersion in the pages of the story.

Technical Specifications:

LM SPLIT ESCAPEMENT ‘EDDY JAQUET’

Eight unique pieces, with dial plates engraved by Eddy Jaquet, inspired by 8 classic young fiction novels:

Engine

LM Split Escapement movement developed for MB&F by Stephen McDonnell.

Split escapement with the balance wheel suspended above the dial and the anchor and escapement wheel under the movement.

Manual winding with double mainspring barrels.

Power reserve: 72 hours

Bespoke 14mm balance wheel with traditional regulating screws visible on top of the movement.

Superlative hand finishing throughout respecting 19^th-century style; bevelled internal angles highlighting hand craft; polished bevels; Geneva waves; hand-made engravings.

Balance frequency: 2.5Hz / 18,000bph

Number of components: 296

Number of jewels: 35

Functions & indications

Hours, minutes, date and power-reserve indicators.

Push-button next to the date dial for quick adjustment of the date.

Case

Material: Stainless steel

Dimensions: 44.5 mm x 18.2 mm

Number of components: 50

Water resistance: 30m / 100ft / 3ATM

Sapphire crystals