In another show of extraordinary creativity, MB&F celebrates World Gorilla Day with a superbly weird and wonderful pencil sharpener. Dubbed GorillaSharpener, this is a design MB&F and made by Caran d’Ache. This is a desktop sharpener with gorilla limbs and is the least expensive MB&F ever.

Our insider commentary in italics with full release information

Least expensive MB&F ever? Introducing the GorillaSharpener

Commentary, Price, Specifications & Official Press Release

Retail price of the GorillaSharpener is CHF 850 + VAT (USD 1165 or EUR 925 + taxes). Limited Edition of 300 pieces.

Deployant’s Commentary & Analysis

A very interesting release from MB&F. This collaboration with Swiss pencil specialist Caran d’Ache. The base is the classic desktop sharpener by Caran d’Ache. A box like shape housing the rotating blade and pencil shavings. With a device to grip the pencil and a crank at the back to rotate the blade. The device is well known to Swiss homes and indeed around the world. I used one as a kid, and it sat in pride of place in my father’s home office.

But of course, as an MB&F objet, it cannot be plain vanilla. And the artistic direction takes this from a useful desktop tool to a tool which qualifies as art as well as for its usefulness. And this novelty is the result is the second collaboration between MB&F and Caran d’Ache. The first was another sharpener dubbed DinoSharpener, affectionately known by collectors as having “Godzilla feet”. DinoSharpener was released in 2025 to commemorate MB&F’s 20th Anniversary. It was not a commercial release, but a gift to the “MB&F Tribe”—the maison’s inner circle of watch owners. One of the benefits of MB&F watch ownership, and a truly unique privilege. The gift package includes a matching set of pencils, a branded collector’s pamphlet and MB&F trading cards highlighting 22 iconic movements. It was a limited edition of 300 pieces. The prototype in a different colour was sold by Phillips in a charity auction for CHF 20k.

This latest novelty is a commercial release of a similar objet. But now featuring gorilla limbs, which are larger, taller than Godzilla’s. The 4 limbs of the Gorilla, sprout from the case of the sharpener, and look superbly muscular. The gorilla’s front arms attach at a higher point in the case and the entire sharpener is tilted to the front. This gives the impression of the stance made by a big silverback primed to pounce. And visually puts this commercial GorillaSharpener look like the DinoSharpener on steroids. The set also includes a box of pencils.

Pricing notes

At CHF 850, this is the least expensive MB&F labelled instrument ever. In comparison to the standard Caran d’Ache sharpener which retails at CHF 180, this is a very large premium. But this is not just a matter of just slapping the MB&F name tag over an existing device. MB&F’s creative designer Maximillian Maertens, created the gorilla arms and made this useful tabletop device into an objet d’art.

MB&F x Caran d’Ache GorillaSharpener Specifications

The Official Press Release

To celebrate the 15th anniversary of the M.A.D.Gallery, MB&F and Caran d’Ache have transformed one of Switzerland’s most familiar childhood objects into an unexpected piece of art. Meet the GorillaSharpener: a fully functional Caran d’Ache pencil sharpener reimagined as a muscular, knuckle-walking mechanical creature.

Released on World Gorilla Day, September 24th, it is inspired by MB&F’s mantra
“A creative adult is a child who survived” and supports the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

Since 1933, the Caran d’Ache Sharpening Machine has been a fixture of Swiss classrooms, helping generations of children turn their imagination into words and drawings. In the hands of MB&F creative designer Maximilian Maertens, that utilitarian object takes on an entirely new character: lifted onto powerful gorilla-like limbs, the sharpener tilts forward as if poised to move across the desk.

The GorillaSharpener began as a series of 2D sketches capturing the animal’s distinctive stance, before being translated into a 3D artwork. Maertens then worked through the technical constraints of moulding and construction to make that posture possible. Unlike Caran d’Ache’s traditional Sharpening Machines, which are designed to rest flat on a surface, the GorillaSharpener appears to hover above the desk on its stainless-steel and cast-iron limbs.

Finished in Alpine Frost blue, the GorillaSharpener combines zinc alloy, steel and chrome-plated mechanical components. Each piece is delivered in a special case, complete with an instruction booklet, a clamp for securing it to a desk or table, and a set of Caran d’Ache wooden pencils presented in special packaging featuring artwork by Maxime Schertenleib, a regular MB&F collaborator.

“I’d had the idea for the GorillaSharpener for quite some time,” shares Maertens. “Gorillas are fascinating animals – one of those animals you probably don’t want to encounter unexpectedly in nature. There was also another connection in my mind: our earlier DinoSharpener reminded me of Godzilla, and Godzilla needs a counterpart. Which is, of course, King Kong.”

The GorillaSharpener follows an earlier collaboration between Caran d’Ache and MB&F around the same iconic Sharpening Machine. In 2024, the two brands created the DinoSharpener, adding dinosaur-like legs to the familiar object to turn it into a light-hearted mechanical sculpture. The relationship between Caran d’Ache and MB&F goes back even further: in 2016, the two Swiss brands created Astrograph, an extraordinary rocket-inspired writing instrument.

Now the GorillaSharpener sits on your desk – where ideas are born – as a quiet reminder that even the smallest rituals can still carry a little wonder.

The GorillaSharpener is a limited edition of 300 pieces, available exclusively through the MB&F eShop, M.A.D.Galleries, MB&F LABs and the MB&F Lounge in New York.

World Gorilla Day – September 24

To help protect the remarkable animals that inspired the GorillaSharpener, MB&F has become a partner of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund – the world’s largest and longest-running organisation dedicated to gorilla conservation – through the symbolic adoption of the historic Pablo mountain gorilla group in Rwanda. Founded in 1967 by famed primatologist Dian Fossey, the organisation has been protecting and studying gorillas for six decades.

Named after the historic silverback Pablo, whom Dian Fossey first studied in 1974, the Pablo group was formed in 1993 and has been monitored and protected by the Fossey Fund ever since. Pablo died in 2008, but the group that bears his name continues to be studied and protected today. The Pablo group is also at the heart of the 2026 Netflix documentary A Gorilla Story: Told by David Attenborough, which returns to Attenborough’s first encounter with Pablo as a baby and follows Pablo’s group in Rwanda today. The group currently numbers around 20 gorillas, with new infants expected soon.

Through the partnership, MB&F contributes to the Fossey Fund’s ongoing daily protection of endangered mountain gorillas, whose global population remains just over 1,000. The support helps fund protection teams, equipment, scientific research, transport and the day-to-day operations required to protect these remarkable animals and their fragile habitat.

For more information:

– on the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund: gorillafund.org

– on the Pablo Group: https://gorillafund.org/life-of-pablo/

MB&F Caran d’Ache GorillaSharpener FAQ