Chasing Moonlight

Nicolette Wong moons over the MB&F MoonMachine 2, the brand’s latest collaboration with Finnish watchmaker Stepan Sarpaneva

- Nicolette Wong

MOONLIGHT DOESN’T exist. The cold, dark soil on Earth’s only natural satellite produces no heat and light of its own—if it did, Nasa’s Apollo  missions would have gone quite differently. The light that we see from the moon is actually a reflection of the sun’s light, without which all sides of the moon would be dark. The illusory nature of this light has captivated MB&F’s Maximilian Büsser and independent watchmaker Stepan Sarpaneva, who sought to embody the concept using the craft they know best—watchmaking. Thus, the MB&F MoonMachine 2 was born.

To be clear, the MoonMachine 2 is not an entirely new creation. Housed in the wedge-shaped case of the MB&F Horological Machine No 8 (HM8), the MoonMachine 2 also takes on the upside-down movement of the HM8 (where the rotor takes pride of place on the dial) as well as the HM8’s battle-axe winding rotor and projected time display that can be read vertically along the bottom edge of the watch. The MoonMachine 2 is what MB&F calls a Performance Art timepiece, where an artist or brand reinterprets an existing MB&F watch in their own unique way. In this case, that artist and brand was Sarpaneva.