Three Innovations That Show Franck Muller’s Technical Spirit

Back in the early 1990s, when independent luxury watchmaking was on the cusp of blowing up as a modern-day phenomenon, entrepreneur Vartan Sirmakes, and horological prodigy Franck Muller were hatching plans that would soon reshape the paradigm of watch appreciation for a new generation of collectors.

The tourbillon is the complication that is most synonymous with Franck Muller. Invented in 1801 by Abraham-Louis Breguet, the tourbillon was originally made to improve the precision of pocket watches. In Franck Muller’s hands, however, the complication not only performs its unique timekeeping duties but has been transformed into miniature sculptural art. The tourbillon is recognised by a gently rotating cage that houses a mechanical watch’s most important timekeeping components. The cage rotates to cancel out the effects of gravity on the timekeeping parts—an animated movement that is mechanically complex and theatrical in equal measure. When Franck Muller introduced his ‘World Premiere’ watches back in the 1980s—never-before-seen high complications that were anchored by the tourbillon—the watchmaker relocated the tourbillon from the back to the front of the wristwatches, a design that has endured till today. Some of the brand’s most eye-catching tourbillons include the Revolution series tourbillons that feature the complication in multiple cages rotating on different axes; the Giga Tourbillon from 2011 that was the tourbillon wristwatch with a 20mm cage; and the world’s fastest tourbillon, Thunderbolt, which features a tourbillon cage that rotates every five seconds, 12 times faster than regular tourbillons. Franck Muller’s latest iteration of the tourbillon comes in the form of the Grand Central Tourbillon. As the name suggests, the watch features a single tourbillon that takes pride of place at the centre of the dial. As tourbillons are usually located at the bottom of the dial, relocating it to the middle requires a reconfiguration of the movement’s architecture. The Grand Central Tourbillon features an automatic, tonneau-shaped movement that not only places the complication on a pedestal but ensures top-notch performance with four days of power reserve.

After the tourbillon, the Crazy Hours is the next complication that is most closely associated with Franck Muller. The watch is everything the name promises to be: first confounding watch collectors with its seemingly incoherent dial featuring jumbled hour markers, before delighting them after its technical ingenuity becomes apparent.

Again, form and function coalesce in harmony with this complication, which displays the hours, minutes, and date together in a ‘digital’ format for the first time. Not only that, the numerical displays literally jump at each change (hence the name), evoking the feel of retro flip clocks, but with greater technical finesse. This complication is showcased in the new 100-piece limited edition Long Island Evolution Master Jumper, which showcases the technical feature against an openworked dial. Though such jumping mechanisms have existed since the 19th century, Franck Muller revitalises them, combining time and date in a novel numerical format that lends a futuristic air to the Master Jumper. Not content to reproduce complications that have existed for centuries, Franck Muller constantly seeks new ways to express well-loved complications in a new and often dramatic light. By injecting these traditional technical marvels with innovation, creativity, and fresh aesthetics, Franck Muller not only lives up to its claim as ‘Master of Complications’, but bestows its intrepid collectors with the same horological cachet.