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Adjust the Speed of Time To Your Moods

Mathias Buttet’s vision for his company, BNB Concept, is not the typical vision we have come to expect from a company creating complicated watch movements; at BNB Concept nothing resembles an assembly line, everyone builds his or her movement from A to Z working alongside a small team of experienced watchmakers. This way, younger watchmakers constantly expand their expertise, increasing their chances of working on ever more intricate movements.

“The piece we are making for Only Watch is a watch that has been created by the Confrérie Horlogère, which is a group of young creative designers within the umbrella of BNB Concept,” says Mathias Buttet. Buttet had had the idea to bring together seven young craftspeople and, in order to develop their full potential and fulfill their dreams, to allow them to create and build original timepieces under his direction and within the security of BNB Concept, where they would have the benefit of a logistic and technical infrastructure.

The birth of the Confrérie Horlogère dates from April 2008. The 2008 – 2009 Companions of the Confrérie Horlogère are: David Rodriguez, Brigitte Carneiro, Ken Koshiyama, Ranieri Ilicher, Sabitry Montandon, and Clara Bise – all watchmakers, plus Gabriel Salgado de Arce, an engraver and watch components chaser.

In March 2009 the Confrérie Horlogère evolved and established two other collections, beside the collection, developed and signed by each Companion, called “Les Complications”. The three Confrérie Horlogère collections are:
• “Les Complications”: The models on display differ remarkably one from another as their makers are strikingly different personalities. Each Companion presents his or her own approach to horology via their creations, all of which bear their name. The objective is to launch a brand based on his or her name at some point in the future.

• “Les Classiques”: The timepieces produced result from the collective inventiveness of the entire membership of the Confrérie Horlogère.
• “Les Masters”: Designed and built with the inventiveness and expertise of the R&D department’s engineers, its timepieces display exceptional mechanical complexity.

 

The Master watch

The Confrérie Horlogère’s Only Watch 09 (by BNB Concept) is “La Clef du Temps” (the Key to Time) – a watch created by Buttet in collaboration with its R& D equip. It is the first timepiece created in “Les Master” collection. It is a working prototype of a sophisticated time-piece called “La Clef du Temps” which will be produced in small series after the Only Watch 09 auction.

It is an innovative tourbillon watch featuring a hand-wound mechanical movement with hour and minute indications, a 3-day power reserve indication (PRI) in a 120° sectoral indicator at 8 o’clock and retrograde running seconds at 4 o’clock.

The retrograde seconds of 0, 30, 60 – depict the rhythm of time as it passes – and the power reserve reminds you when to rewind the piece as it makes its 0, ½, and three-day passage. Like a body – if you don’t eat properly your body doesn’t function properly – and so with the watch if you forget to rewind it.

“The funds from Only Watch are there to help the children suffering from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy,” says Buttet. “So I thought: what is it that everyone hopes for? Everyone hopes that these children will live longer than expected. I wanted this watch to express this dilemma.”

Buttet wanted the piece to convey two very important and thought-provoking concepts associated with being a parent: Firstly, the idea that however rich you are, true luxury lies in the freedom to manage one’s time as one wishes; secondly, the watch has a sophisticated mechanism that allows the wearer to “adjust the speed” of his personal time by adjusting a simple three-position lever that alters the running speed of the hours and the minutes.

 

As Buttet says, “This way, pleasant moments can be made to last twice as long while unpleasant ones can be shortened by half while the ability to “return” to true time is always there.” The watch’s extremely sophisticated mechanism allows the watch’s time indications to remain in positions 1 or 3 as long as its wearer wishes, since a simple turn of the lever to position 2 (the watch’s memory) resets the hour and the minute hand to the real time of day.

As Buttet sees it, it’s his way of extracting some form of balance from a seeming unjust world that makes us feel that when life is good, time flies, but it slows to a crawl during the rough patches. As with a child with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, the pleasure of the good times passes all too fast and the painful moments all too slow.

The movement is shaped like a stylized human brain, because, according to Mathias Buttet, the time is a sort of “state of mind” which is the result of the will of any single person. Not to have time to do something is, at the end, a personal decision and it is not at all something imposed by someone else.

Every person decides if he or she wants to have the time to do or not to do something.

Moreover he adds “If you look at the figures on the dial you will see that they are mirror images of themselves. Some numbers are reflected face-to-face, showing the moment that are the result of the one’s will, some others are reflected back-to-back: in this case is the fate that controls your life”.

The futuristic case is shaped like a spaceship – ever searching for a better life – and the strap is composed of four rubber-clad steel strands. Lifetime warranty and the totally Swiss-made provenance of its every part and component are other characteristics of the “La Clef du Temps” as well as of all the timepieces branded Confrérie Horlogère.

 

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For more information contact:
Ita McCobb
Patrizzi & Co Auctioneers SA
Tel +41 22 318 28 38
e-mail i.mccobb@patrizziauction.com

Audrey Baylac
Association Monégasque contre les Myopathies / Monaco Yacht Show
Tel +377 93 10 41 70
e-mail audrey@monacoyachtshow.mc