Massena Lab And Raúl Pagès Created A Proprietary

“William Massena is one of the few men in this industry that has seen many sides of replica watch uk watches – from journalism to retail, to consulting, to auctions – and his influence on watches is tough to overstate.”

Ben wrote those words when Massena appeared on Talking Watches in 2015, and they still hold true nearly seven full years later. You can’t spend too much time on the so-called “watch internet” before you come across Massena’s name. The big difference these days, however, is where you might first see it.

Instead of an online forum like Timezone (where he worked as managing director of the site),

or an auction house like Antiquorum (Massena served a three-year stint as the CEO of the watch-focused entity),

now you’re likely to first discover the Massena moniker as part of a business that’s known as Massena Lab.

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Massena Lab was established as a concept studio and design firm that could house Massena’s limited-edition collaborations with existing watch brands and watchmakers (such as Unimatic, Habring², Ming,

Louis Erard, and Luca Soprano) as well as his own Massena-branded timepieces that are influenced by the vintage watches Massena has loved for years,

such as 2020’s Universal Genève-inspired Uni-Racer. The newest Massena Lab watch, however, is the first watch to fully combine both sides of the business.

It’s also the most interesting and compelling Massena Lab watch yet.

What Is It?

The Massena Lab Magraph is a collaboration between Massena and the independent Swiss-based watchmaker Raúl Pagès, who we saw most recently in February of this year after the release of his detent escapement-equipped Régulateur à détente RP1 wristwatch.

The Magraph consists of a 38.5mm × 10mm case made of 316L stainless steel with an attractive off-white sector dial design that’s directly inspired by a unique-piece Patek Philippe Calatrava ref. 96 from the early 20th century. The one-of-a-kind Patek that gives Massena Lab’s new watch its name was originally produced under the special order of a now-defunct Berlin jeweler named Margraf in 1935,

and it most recently sold at Christie’s Geneva in May 2008 for CHF 238,600.

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More importantly, the Magraph features the M660 caliber,

the first proprietary movement used in a Massena Lab watch,

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You might have noticed, however, that the dial of the watch does not feature the names of both collaborators: only Massena’s name appears in a vintage-inspired script underneath 12 o’clock. There’s a reason for this.

he did not personally handle the production or decoration of the movement like he would in one of his own watches, such as the Soberly Onyx or RP1.

That’s the key reason the Magraph has a price tag of just $8,675 instead of a figure surpassing $50,000.

The Magraph debuted late last week in a limited-edition run of 99 pieces that have all since sold out, but the collaboration and watch deserve a much closer look. I was able to handle the new watch and speak with both Pagès and Massena about its production and development a few weeks ago.

Here’s what I learned.

The Collaboration
“From the day Massena Lab was born, I always had the ambition of creating my own movement,” Massena says. “There were obviously two huge problems with it: One was money, and the second was people.”

Massena and Pagès had met just once before, in 2012, after the release of Pagès’ first creation, a tortoise-shaped automaton. It wasn’t until Dr. Sébastien Chaulmontet – the current Head of Innovation and Marketing at Sellita, the author of Chronographs For Collectors, and the former Head of Movement Design for Arnold & Son, Angelus Watches, and La Joux-Perret – reconnected the two in 2019 that the idea of working together became feasible.

“I knew William by his name and reputation,” Pagès says. It was a very cool and interesting process. We have the same vision of beautiful watchmaking, and the same taste in terms of design and finishing, so it was quite easy for us to work together.”

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It didn’t take long for the two new partners to move forward with the project. Massena focused his efforts on designing and creating an appropriate case and dial, while Pagès designed the M660 caliber and worked out a plan for its construction.

“This was the most complicated and difficult collaboration to make [in Massena Lab’s history], just because there was a movement,” Massena says. “But there was confidence that we each understood and trusted what the other one was doing, so we didn’t need to argue about anything. Our style and influences are very similar, so when we finally put the whole thing together in CAD, we realized everything was working out great. We really made this baby together in the sense that we each brought a unique contribution to it; this is really an entirely new concept for the both of us.”

So how exactly were Massena and Pagès able to bring a new Swiss-made movement to market that they could both be proud of without bankrupting themselves, or their potential clients?

The answer, surprisingly, came from the world of Italian tailoring.

The Movement

The proprietary Massena Lab M660 caliber is a manual-wind movement that runs in 21 jewels, at a beat rate of 28,800 vibrations per hour (aka, 4 Hz), and with a solid-enough power reserve of 60 hours.

The components then come to Pagès for quality control – to ensure they’re up to his standard – before moving on to a third-party facility in Switzerland that handles assembly. The completed M660 caliber then returns to Pagès’ workshop for a final round of quality checks and control.