Franck Muller the watch making company
Brief Biography
Franck Muller, who is he, and what has he done? Franck Muller is called the "Master of Complications". Franck Muller is a Swiss watchmaker that was born in 1958 in the place called the La Chaux-de-Fonds. When he was 15 he made one of the biggest steps in his life and enrolled into a watch making school. Later in the year 1980 he graduated the school and started repairing high-quality pocket watches.
Franck Muller was close to Svend Andersen who was an independent watch maker. The second important step he made was that he became responsible for the collection of watches of Patek Philippe. Everybody knows that Patek Philippe is watchmaker that was creating very expensive and sophisticated modern watches.
Mostly the clients of Franck Muller were museums and private individuals. While repairing complicated watches Franck Muller started liking the complicated mechanisms he was repairing. That is why he started thinking about his own workshop.
Franck Muller Company
His creative career started in 1984 when he designed and a new collection of Tourbillion (French for "whirlwind") wristwatch.
The clients of Franck Muller continued buying the watch from him and his business started growing. Very few people could really create complicated timepieces and one of them was Franck Muller.
Finally in 1992 he has opened the House of Franck Muller where he was producing his timepieces. He has become popular in Europe and United states. His products are very various and have different design as the price range is different too.
The headquarters of his company is placed in Genthod by the Lake Geneva. The watchmaker is continuously inspired to design more complicated and original exclusive watches. He is designing the mechanisms for every timepiece he does by himself and this what makes him a true watchmaker.
Today his company continues to created new timepieces for a limited number of people, his clientele.
The collections and timepieces of Franck Muller
Every year he designs a new collection and every new collection of watches has something that is very different from the other collections; something exclusive and something unordinary.
Franck Muller's collections are different from any other watchmakers' collections because his main goals are style, design and the complicated mechanism. Later on you will se how complicated his watches are and how he made them gadget-like.
There are several collections made by the "Master of Complications":
- Curvex Tonneau
- Long Island
- Casablanca
- Chronograph
- Color Dreams
- Tourbillion
- Conquistador Cortez King
The Tourbillion collection was his first one and it had a very interesting mechanism. Well, as we all know the gravity force can affect the pocket watch and their accuracy will not be precise. So there was this technique invented in 1795. The solution was simple: mount the escapement in a rotating frame. The frame could rotate 1800 and was cancelling the gravity affect and the other perturbing forces affects. At that time it was considered to be one of the most difficult mechanisms to make.
The timepieces
Some of the notable timepieces are:
- Revolution2
- Revolution3
- Crazy Hours
- Colour Dreams
- Endurance (Simple chronograph)
- Master Banker (tonneau-shaped can indicate several time zones)
- Curvex Minute Repeater Tourbillon (limited to 25 pieces)
Revolution 2 is the world's first watch to have both vertical and horizontal tourbillion.
When you see this watch in action you notice a rotating carriage. It rotates once a minute and it looks really amazing. Some pieces have this carriage show the seconds because it makes a full rotation in precisely one minute. You see this mechanism go round and round and you see that it is alive and it is amazing.
Revolution 3 is one of the timepieces from the Tourbillion collection. The main difference from the other watches is that this one has the minute repeater. This system allows the watch to let you know what the time is using audible tones. So this is how the first wrist watch that had the function of audible tones has been created. For example when it is 2:17 the watch will make you the sound: "dong, dong, ding-dong, ding, ding" where dong corresponds to one hour and ding corresponds to a minute.
Long Island Crazy Hours is a timepiece which is really unusual. It has mixed-up hours one the face. The hour hand does not function like a usual one; it has a twist to it: It jumps to indicate the hour. The minute hand functions normally. Another cool and expensive thing about this watch is that it is made of 18 K White Gold, cool huh? And it does look cool.
The Colour Dreams watch is one of the models of Curvex Collection. There are some more Colour Dreams models and here they are. Their main idea was to make the numbers in different colors. So that the women that wear them would be different from others.
Chronograph Endurance it is a timepiece from the Chronograph collection. The special thing about this watch is that it has numbers through 23 on the face. So it shows the time by the 24 hour mode. The race in Le Mans is 24 hours long so later this watch has been called the official Le Mans watch.
Some examples of Master Banker watches and their main difference from the others is that they have sapphire glass on its face and 18 K White Gold.
Franck Muller was making many more models of Complicated timepieces and there are some that have extraordinary features like showing the moon phase and movement speed. The models like: Grande Sonnerie, Master City, Power Reserve, Master Formula, Retrogrande second, Conquistador, Havana Collection, The Classics all deserve to be mentioned in this article because they are truly the master pieces of their time. His company is prospering at the moment and they are creating more and more complicated watches. Franck Muller has proven his name of the "Master of Complications".
