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THE 1975 MASTER SKELETON – PEARL BUOY BRINGS CONTEMPORARY ART TO THE WRIST, IN SUPPORT OF THE SWISS INSTITUTE’S TIMEFORART AUCTION.
Some watches tell the time, others tell a story, and the 1975 MASTER Skeleton – Pearl Buoy by Ficus Interfaith does both, and for a good cause.
Created by Maurice Lacroix for the Swiss Institute’s biennial TimeForArt auction, this unique piece is the result of a dialogue between the Jura-based Manufacture and the New York-based artist duo Ficus Interfaith. The auction will be conducted by Phillips in New York on 5 December 2026. All proceeds will support the Institute’s initiatives promoting the contemporary art scene, notably exhibitions and artist residency programmes.
Maurice Lacroix has supported TimeForArt since its inaugural edition in 2022. This year, the Manufacture invited Ficus Interfaith, whose approach to reinterpreting traditional craft techniques echoes its own philosophy of revisiting watchmaking tradition in order to reinvent it.
Founded in 2014, the duo of Ryan Bush and Raphael Martinez Cohen explores materials, their history and techniques such as terrazzo. The process arranges fragments of glass, marble, granite or other unexpected objects within resin. The resulting blocks are then cut, revealing patterns shaped both by the artists’ intent and by the unpredictability of each cut.
As Maurice Lacroix CEO Joël Chabanne puts it, the piece is “a genuine dialogue between art and watchmaking.”
Used to working at a larger scale, with sculptures, furniture, installations and architectural works, the duo applied its approach to the dimensions of a watch. The result is “Pearl Buoy,” a work in which pearls are arranged within a block of epoxy resin, a material unprecedented in watchmaking both technically and aesthetically.
The block was then cut into slices only 1 mm thick, compared with the 4 mm the duo typically achieves in its other works. This was made possible by the expertise of Maurice Lacroix’s Jura-based partner specializing in composite materials. After this delicate process, the Manufacture selected the composition with the most balanced visual result.
Miniaturizing art is, in itself, a watchmaking endeavor. Placing the artwork over a mechanical movement required a complete rethink of dial integration and a new process tailored to the constraints involved. Every detail had to be reduced and refined with extreme precision, without losing the essence of the original. As Ficus Interfaith explains, the perception becomes entirely different when terrazzo is refined to the point where it can sit above a mechanical movement.
Behind the subtly translucent dial, the ML234 calibre can be glimpsed. This is the finely decorated skeleton movement of the 1975 MASTER Skeleton, also visible through the sapphire caseback. A genuine pearl, cut as a cabochon, adorns the crown.
The strap is just as considered. The Japanese leather combines traditional tanning with several layers of lacquer to achieve a “Black Diamond” finish, giving the surface a pearled lustre. On each side, a leaf, the symbol of Ficus Interfaith, and the Maurice Lacroix logo, both in gold, face one another. They embody the meeting of the horological and the artistic that made this piece possible.
With this collaboration, Maurice Lacroix explores a more artistic facet of watchmaking and shows the transformative power of art. A work born from an artistic process becomes a dial, bringing conceptual and aesthetic depth to the watch.
