He Built the Golden Bridge, Blancpain’s Flying Tourbillon and the M.A.D.3’s Wandering Hours: Meet Vincent Calabrese
8 min read
The most talked-about watch of this September does not have an hour hand. The M.A.D.3, the third release from MB&F's M.A.D.Editions, tells the hour through a little window that wanders slowly across the dial, as if time itself were taking a stroll. It sold through a raffle and to the brand's inner circle, and the internet could not stop talking about it. But the more I read about it, the less I cared about the watch, and the more I wanted to know about the 82-year-old Neapolitan whose name is printed on it.
His name is Vincent Calabrese, and I quickly realized the wandering hour is one of his smaller tricks. This is the man who floated a watch movement in mid-air for the Corum Golden Bridge. He built movements shaped like their owners' initials, designed an early flying tourbillon wristwatch for Blancpain, and made a travel clock whose entire mechanism hides inside the minute hand. He holds more than forty patents and co-founded the AHCI, the academy that gave independent watchmakers a voice.
And yet he left school at 13, arrived in Switzerland with no qualifications, and was told by colleagues at his first factory job that he was not a watchmaker, just an Italian. This is the story of how he proved them wrong.
From the Streets of Naples to the Swiss Jura
Vincent Calabrese was born in Naples in 1944, into a poor family. He grew up with his parents, brother and sister in a basso, a single ground-floor room of about 30 square meters opening onto a noisy street in the old city. His father had returned from the war an invalid and struggled to find work. His mother, who loved opera, worked long hours at her sewing machine to give her children a better future. Asked years later about his first significant childhood memory, he answered with a single word: "Injustice."
Calabrese left school at around 13 and drifted through odd jobs, including chemist's assistant and bookshop deliveryman. As a boy he dreamed of becoming a sailor, then a trumpet player. Watchmaking came almost by chance: it was his mother who chose the trade for him. After a short, poorly paid apprenticeship with a local watchmaker, he set himself up at home as a watch repairer when he was barely 14, and spent several years fixing watches on the streets of Naples.
A Neapolitan in Le Locle
Facing compulsory military service, the young Calabrese saw emigration as his escape. An uncle had already settled in Switzerland, so in the winter of 1961, at 17, he moved with his mother, brother and sister to Le Locle, the heart of Swiss watchmaking.
Within a week he was hired by Tissot. When he told colleagues he was a watchmaker, the reply was often that he was simply "an Italian". Over the next decade he moved restlessly between employers, including Cyma, Zenith in 1964, and workshops in Morges and La Chaux-de-Fonds, eventually becoming a workshop foreman. He learned fast, improved every department he ran, and left whenever promises were not kept. In 1971 he landed his dream job: managing a watch boutique and workshop in the glamorous ski resort of Crans-Montana. Surrounded by wealthy clients and prestigious brands, the self-taught Neapolitan began to imagine a future of his own.
The Birth of the Golden Bridge
The idea that changed Calabrese's life began with a damaged antique. In Crans-Montana, a client brought him a 19th-century “reputed” pocket watch that had been run over by a car. The movement could still be repaired, but the client only wanted the case fixed. He did not care whether the watch actually worked. Calabrese was furious. That day, he resolved to one day build a watch that people would buy purely for the beauty of its movement. It would take years, and he still had no formal qualifications, so he sharpened his skills with courses at Patek Philippe and Rolex. I find it hard to imagine a better origin story for a watch: born not in a boardroom, but out of pure indignation.
An impossible movement
When the 1970s quartz crisis shook the Swiss industry, Calabrese left industrial watchmaking and set up on his own as an artisan in 1975. That same year he began work on his own "school watch", and it was anything but simple. His vision was a movement stripped to its bare essentials: a slim baguette with every gear lined up in a single row, floating inside a transparent case with no visible means of support. The hardest problem was winding and setting the watch with one crown, since nobody had found a way for the crown's stem to cross the barrel in an in-line movement. His solution was to pass the winding stem through a hollow barrel. The design looked simple but was fiendishly hard to make, and he even had to build some of his own tools. His aim, as he later put it, was "to show beauty, simplicity and mystery all in one."
Corum takes a chance
After rejections from several brands, the prototype caught the eye of René Bannwart, founder of Corum, who bought the patent. The movement won a gold medal at the Geneva International Exhibition of Inventions in 1977. After three years of development together, Corum unveiled it as the Golden Bridge at the 1980 Basel fair, the year of the brand's 25th anniversary. The watch became a global success and is still the signature of Corum today. Its lineage has grown to include a titanium Ti-Bridge in 2009, a Golden Bridge tourbillon in 2010 and, in 2011, an automatic version wound by a linear oscillating weight. In the 2010s, Corum brought Calabrese back to contribute ideas to its movement development team, closing a circle more than thirty years after his first sketch.
A Lifetime of Inventions
Movements in any shape
The Golden Bridge was only the beginning. In his "Spatiale" watches, Calabrese bent the floating-movement idea into almost any form: letters of the alphabet, a client's initials, even the boot-shaped outline of Italy. A watch whose movement literally spells your name is still one of the most personal ideas I have come across.
The flying tourbillon
Blancpain commissioned him to build a tourbillon, and he delivered a flying tourbillon, one without an upper bridge, which was a rarity in wristwatches at the time. When Blancpain delayed the release, he presented his own version, the mechanism appearing to float between two crystals. In 1985 he also unveiled a tourbillon in a sapphire case to celebrate the founding of the AHCI.
The Baladin: the wandering hours behind the M.A.D.3
By the late 1980s, royalties were not arriving and his small workshop in Morges was struggling to survive. The idea that rescued him was the Baladin, named after the wandering storytellers of Italian streets. Instead of an hour hand, a window carrying the hour slowly travels around the dial, pointing to the minutes as it goes. He licensed it to the Italian fashion brand Pinko, and it sold in the thousands. The Baladin also set a new direction for his work: "extraordinary watches with ordinary movements", clever complications built on dependable base calibers. My favorite oddity from this period is Two Hands, a tourbillon travel clock whose entire movement hides inside the minute hand. His work eventually earned him the Gaïa Prize, often called the Nobel Prize of watchmaking.
Hard years and a comeback
After personal tragedy and a failed partnership, 2006 to 2008 became years of survival. He rebuilt through licenses and commissions for names including Cartier, Louis Vuitton and Blancpain, for whom he developed a carousel shown as a prototype at Basel in 2007. By the end of 2011 he was fully independent again, and he later launched his own label, Nouvelle Horlogerie Calabrese.
Founding the AHCI: A Home for Independent Watchmakers
Calabrese's most lasting legacy may not be a watch at all. When he sold the Golden Bridge to Corum, his contract stated that his name should be credited in the brand's communications about the movement. In practice, he felt his authorship was being left out of the story. That frustration became the spark for something bigger. In 1985, Calabrese co-founded the Académie Horlogère des Créateurs Indépendants (AHCI) together with Danish watchmaker Svend Andersen. The goal was to give independent creators a platform to show their work under their own names, at a time when independent watchmaking barely existed as an idea.
The AHCI went on to nurture many of the most respected names in modern watchmaking, and its success helped shape today's thriving independent scene. Calabrese, who has proudly called himself "the troublemaker of watchmaking", built a community that champions exactly what he fought for: credit, creativity and freedom from the big brands.
The M.A.D.3: Vincent Calabrese's Wandering Hours Return
Which brings me back to the M.A.D.3. Seen through the lens of his life, the watch makes perfect sense: the Baladin, the complication that once saved his career, now reborn in a collaboration with MB&F's M.A.D.Editions. The 40mm watch features his wandering hours and a hidden phrase revealed through the rotor, which roughly translates as: it is easy to please others, much harder to be proud of yourself. He has also told his own story in an autobiography, Le Temps d'une vie (A Lifetime), published by Editions Slatkine. It is both a personal memoir and a candid look at the Swiss watch industry.
From a 30-square-metre room in Naples to the history books of horology, Vincent Calabrese's life is proof that great watchmaking often comes from people who refuse to follow the rules. "The only language I can express myself with is watchmaking," he once said. After digging into his story, I would add that very few people have ever spoken it so fluently. His advice to the next generation is just as simple: "Do not stay on the highway. Take your own path."
Vincent Calabrese: Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Vincent Calabrese?
Vincent Calabrese is an Italian-born, self-taught watchmaker based in Switzerland. Born in Naples in 1944, he is best known for creating the Corum Golden Bridge and co-founding the AHCI.
What did Vincent Calabrese invent?
His best-known invention is the in-line baguette movement used in the Corum Golden Bridge. He also created the Spatiale shaped movements, an early flying tourbillon wristwatch for Blancpain, and the Baladin wandering-hours complication, and holds more than forty patents.
When was the Corum Golden Bridge launched?
Corum unveiled the Golden Bridge at the Basel fair in 1980, after buying Calabrese's patent and developing the movement with him.
