The Write Stuff: Carl F. Bucherer Partners with Swiss Penmaker Caran d’Ache for Manero Flyback Signature Edition

Multi-generational family-owned Swiss firms are a relative rarity in the world of luxury goods, but among them are Lucerne-based watchmaker Carl F. Bucherer and Genevan writing instrument purveyor Caran d’Ache. The prestigious maisons have now teamed up to produce the so-called Signature Moments project — a limited-edition set pairing a specially designed Carl F. Bucherer Manero Flyback timepiece with an equally exclusive, customized Caran d’Ache rollerball pen.

The Carl F. Bucherer Manero Flyback Signature, limited to 188 pieces, will look familiar to connoisseurs of the mainline Manero Flyback models but also immediately striking for its differences. The subdials are executed in a graphite gray, contrasting sharply with the silvered dial, which itself plays host to a multicolored array of hour markers. The colors chosen for the dial details evoke those of the artists’ colored pencils that Caran d’Ache produces as part of its repertoire. Like previous versions of the Manero Flyback, the limited edition has a 43-mm stainless steel case, outfitted with the self-winding Caliber CFB 1970, which boasts a 42-hour power reserve and a column-wheel-driven chronograph with a flyback function. Activated by the vintage-style pump pushers on the side of the case, the stopwatch is able to make multiple time measurements in quick succession, since both chronograph hands — the center-mounted seconds counter and the small counter of the elapsed-minutes subdial at 3 o’clock — can be reset to zero instantly to begin timing a new interval.

The Caran d’Ache Signature rollerball pen that accompanies the watch takes stylistic cues from it: its rhodium- and silver-coated body is decorated with a “crown effect” guillochage and a hand-lacquered multicolored triangle motif that echoes the colored triangular indices on the dial. The thin red line engraved in the pen’s tip is designed to resemble the watch’s hands, while the cap is enhanced with a delicately lacquered, graphite gray hexagonal isotype that calls to mind the watch’s subdials and, by extension, the Caran d’Ache graphite pencils that inspired them. Like the watch, the pen is limited to 188 total pieces.

The Manero Flyback Signature watch is mounted on a striped beige-and-graphite-gray NATO textile strap with red highlights; it’s presented in a custom traveling pouch, together with the Caran d’Ache Signature pen and an additional striped NATO strap with blue tones. According to Carl F. Bucherer, both straps are made from 100 percent recycled PET and thus 100 percent sustainable.

The Signature Moments set, containing both the luxury watch and its made-to-match pen, crafted in a partnership between two family-led Swiss firms more than a century old, retails for $6,900.