Noted Swiss architect, artist, and industrial designer, Max Bill, is known for his broad range of work that was characterized by a clarity of design and precise proportions. Examples include his elegant clocks and watches designed for watchmaker, Junghans, one of his long-term clients. Now, Junghans has recently announced its series of 2021 releases, and among them is an impressive box set consisting of three limited edition Max Bill Edition Set 60 watches. The Max Bill Edition Set 60 was created to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Junghans Max Bill wristwatch. The set includes three watches that provide roughly the same information but elements on the dials have been rearranged to present that information in different ways. Of course, they all work within a style that will be familiar to watch enthusiasts who have enjoyed these watches in the past. The dials are stark white, and the hands are long and thin and point to hour and minute tracks defined by printed black lines of different lengths, which creates an intuitive basis for telling the time at a glance.
The first watch in the set is the Max Bill Automatic, a simple time and date model in a 38mm case that is PVD coated. With its signature, incredibly thin hour and minute markers, and needle-pointed hands it is incredibly readable and deceptively simple, backed by the J800.1 automatic movement. In the second variation, the Max Bill MEGA Kleine Sekunde, however, the seconds are separated out to a subdial at 6 o’clock, leaving minutes and hours central. Here the markers at 12, 3, 6, and 9 are embellished with circles so they can be picked out more easily, but otherwise, the overall design is the same. This watch, however, is powered by caliber J101.66, which is a relatively new (introduced in 2018) radio-controlled caliber functioning off an atomic time signal. What this means is that the watch is essentially always accurate and capable of updating itself across time zones when linked to the Junghans MEGA app. It is also an incredibly discreet perpetual calendar and comes in at the same wrist-friendly 38mm size as the mechanical version.
Finally, the Max Bill Regulator features a time-only display in a regulator-style layout, with a centrally mounted minute hand, a small register for the hours at 12:00, and a running seconds register at 6:00. The regulator layout is deeply tied to the history of watchmaking, having been used by clockmakers as reference tools in the earliest days of mechanical horology. Here, it functions to break down the Max Bill design aesthetic to its core components and links it to an earlier period in watchmaking history. All three pieces share the same bright orange hands but otherwise show off the technically diverse range of pieces under the Max Bill moniker. All three also come together in a nicely presented set, complete with an illustration of the artist himself.
For more on new watch releases, check out the Instantanée LIP By Semper & Adhuc.
