All previous MB&F Machines created for the ONLY Watch Auction up to date were unique pieces from existing collections that incorporated visual elements related to the auction. For this year’s ONLY Watch Auction, MB&F and L’Epée have teamed up yet again, to make an incredible clock never released before. The clock seeks to highlight the special nature of the auction. The unconventional, highly metaphorical table clock was created with a small sculpture of a young boy named Tom who represents the children living with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy —the cause behind this auction and a degenerative disease that causes the gradual loss of basic motor functions, including the ability to walk. Tom rides a T-Rex friend, who carries him away into fantastical realms as a symbol of the hope offered by the ONLY Watch Auction to the children affected by the disease.
Tom & T-Rex will be the first and a unique example of the T-Rex clock co-created by MB&F and L’Epée 1839, which is planned for general release at the end of August 2019 with substantial changes. The “ONLY Watch” unique piece uses a light-blue tinted Murano glass and the subsequent collection will feature Murano glass components in red, deep blue and green.
Standing over 30 cm —about 12 inches— tall and crafted from more than 200 components of palladium-plated brass, bronze and stainless steel, with a translucent dial in hand-blown Murano glass, Tom & T-Rex deliver the time with 8 days of power reserve. Tom measures only 4.3 cm — 1.7 inches— high and he is sitting a top the clock. Less than a fifth as tall as the T-Rex, the clock maintains real-life proportions. Cross-legged in a particularly youthful, tranquil yet vulnerable pose, Tom stares down into a transparent blue marble of Murano glass nestled in his cupped hands, perhaps imagining a different world.
Made of hand-blown Murano glass, the “eyeball” also functions as a clock dial, indicating hours and minutes via two curved hands driven from the center of the component. Beating within the 201 finely finished components is a manual wound mechanical movement conceived and manufactured entirely in-house by L’Epée 1839. Powered by a single barrel, the clock has an 8-day power reserve. Time is set with a key, fitted through the centre of the Murano glass dial, while the power reserve is separately maintained with the same key at the rear of the movement.
Despite being completely fixed in position, the jointed legs of T-Rex are deliberately posed to suggest energy and a sense of motion. A combination of sandblasted and polished surfaces directs the way that light interacts with the body of T-Rex, so that the clock seems light and agile, ready to run off with its diminutive passenger to a land where disease has ceased to exist.
Out of the 10 previous clocks made jointly by MB&F and L’Epée, T-Rex bears the closest design kinship to the clocks inspired by the animal kingdom such as Octopod or Arachnophobia. In the use of materials such as colored Murano glass, it is closest to Medusa. Conceptually, the sentient cyborg pan-opticon “eyeball” that forms the main body of T-Rex shifts the clock closer to the robotic brethren of Balthazar, Melchior and Sherman. The legs of T-Rex were modeled directly on actual Tyrannosaurus Rex bones, using 3D scans of fossilized dinosaur skeletons as references to create verisimilitude in the final design.
Tom & T-Rex’ is a unique piece created for the 2019 ONLY Watch charity auction taking place on November 9th, 2019 in Geneva, Switzerland.
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