What if the most exclusive thing you could own is a clock you built yourself? That is the proposition behind Nostromo, a new collaboration between MB&F’s M.A.D.Gallery and French clockmaker Maison Alcée, created to celebrate the gallery’s 15th anniversary — an adventure that began in Geneva and has since spread to Dubai and beyond.
Founded in 2021 by husband-and-wife team Alcée and Benoît Montfort, Maison Alcée specialises in a singular experience: the client becomes the watchmaker, assembling their own high-end mechanical table clock from a kit, guided by a beautifully illustrated 250-page book, purpose-made tools and video support. Their first creation, Persée, won the Audacity Prize at the 2023 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève.
For Nostromo, MB&F Creative Designer Maximilian Maertens — a self-confessed H.R. Giger fan — has transformed the clock into an alien-like creature from outer space, named after the ship in the first Alien film. The clock is turned on its side and stands on three organic feet, its time display angled upward, its dial broken into individual islands in the M.A.D.Gallery’s signature peacock blue, opening up views of the gears within. Blackened hands provide contrast against the movement.
Based on a wristwatch movement built at larger scale, Nostromo marks hours, minutes and seconds, chimes the hours on demand, and holds a fourteen-day power reserve. Assembly takes around ten hours and — save for the pre-assembled regulating organ — is designed to be achievable by any lover of high horology, novices included. “It would have been easier if I had been designing something for professional watchmakers to assemble,” admits Maertens, “but this was a different story.”
Nostromo is a limited edition of 50 pieces, each accompanied by its illustrated instruction book. The intense pride of having created something from A to Z with one’s own hands, as Alcée Montfort puts it, comes included.
