The Legend of Franck Muller - Westime

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Franck Muller Long Island Totally Crazy Color Dreams human objective. With each stroke toward Franck Muller, I grew in exhaustion, while Franck remained serene, bobbing on the insouciant current. Then, as I neared him, as if through some form of telekinesis, he sensed my approach and turned to meet me, his face beaming with health, his smile dazzlingly white, his voice booming over the waves. “Welcome, my friend!” He bellowed in his distinctive baritone. That same voice struck me with its native intelligence each time I interviewed him. Immediately, he launched into a conversation about watches: what he felt they represented to human culture, why we are eternally fascinated by these tiny machines with heartbeats. I quickly extracted my voice recorder while trying to tread water with one hand. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried this, but what happens is, you go in a circle. The result was my slow, constant pirouette beside him like some mentally deficient synchronized swimmer. Franck was kindly oblivious to my unconventional aquatic behavior. And in the hour we spent moving inexorably toward shore, I was forever changed by what he told me. I had come to discuss one thing. Before Franck Muller, the term “complication” was used only to describe the way a watch could communicate some empirical measure of time. Although Franck had reintroduced the fascination with traditional complications, he had also given birth to an all-new type of complication that today represents one of the most significant revolutions in contemporary horology. Franck used his horological skills to create the world’s first emotional complication with a watch whose sole purpose was not to provide an ever more arcane measurement of time, but to transform time itself into an emotional language. With this watch, he disrupted our perception of time, uprooted it, eliminated its plodding finality, and reinvented time as a revelatory experiential medium. He did all this with an extraordinary timepiece called Crazy Hours, whose legacy still resonates as strongly today as when it was first born. This is its story. And as it turned out, in the sea experiencing a baptism of sorts, was the perfect place for me to hear it.
PART ONE CRAZY HOURS THE BIRTH OF THE EMOTIONAL COMPLICATION At first glance, the Crazy Hours watch — with its dial an incandescent blaze of seemingly random and scattered numbers, scattered with the same spontaneity as Jackson Pollack’s brushstrokes — seems miles apart from the ordered precision of Muller’s tourbillon watches. Yet there is a salient link between these timepieces in that their primary objective is to provoke human emotion. Franck Muller explains, “In many ways, the Crazy Hours was an extension of a simple philosophy that was born when I created my first tourbillon wristwatch. In 1801, when the tourbillon was first made, it was created as a precision device. It was made to fight gravity when pocket watches are in the vertical position. But today, it has no meaning as a precision device as wristwatches adopt innumerable positions throughout the day. Their raison d’être has become that they are simply beautiful to look at, a wonder of micro-mechanics and watchmaking art.” While Muller was instrumental in the revival of the tourbillon, he is quick to underscore the rationale for a tourbillon in this wristwatch format. He states, “It is essentially an emotional device. This is why I decided to put it on the front of the watch. Later, others realized the emotional value of the tourbillon and followed me.” When asked if, in an age filled with micro-electronic instruments, the primary purpose for all horological complications is their emotional value, Muller is quick to agree. He states, “Similarly, a minute repeater was born to serve a pragmatic function. In the days before electricity, it was an ordeal to get out of bed, light a candle and read what time it was, so the minute repeater, a watch that literally played time, was created. Today, light is available at the flick of a switch. Time is displayed on electronic clocks that are illuminated at night. So today, a minute repeater has no real pragmatic function. It is simply a beautiful device, and emotional art form. A transcendent instrument that changes time into music!” While Muller had by 2003 become the uncontested “Master of Complications”, ushering in 36 world premieres and patents in a space of only 20 years, he began to think of another purpose for his extraordinary watchmaking skills. He explains, “Tourbillon, perpetual calendar and minute repeater — these types of watches are called complications, because they are complicated to make and because they add levels of complication to timepieces. But I began to think of ideas to create complications that corresponded to the needs of modern society.” One watch that emerged from Muller’s desire to express the needs of the contemporary world in his watches was the Master Banker — a response to the realities of travel and business conducted over multiple time zones. But as he thought deeper about it, he began to visualize an all-new type of complication, one whose primacy of purpose had less to do with calculating minutiae and more with transforming time into an emotional language. Muller explains his rationale, “One thing which I was thinking about was that all the information shown on traditional complications could be read off your computer. As such, I wanted to create a type of watch that offered an experience you could not have with an electronic device. This watch must evoke emotion, it must remind you that watches were living objects and not soulless electronics. In order to do this, I had to examine the fundamental concepts behind civil time.” But Muller’s moment of revelation for his new watch would only come accompanied by an unconventional baptism in water. A WATCH WITH NO RULES Muller laughs as he recalls the unexpected birth of the Crazy Hours. It all started because of his aversion to the cold. He states, “I don’t like the cold. And so, every New Year, I seek out warm places to celebrate with my family. My second wife and I had a baby born on 21 December 2001. When he was one year old, we decided to bring him on a vacation for the New Year. I discussed destinations with my friend Jean Todt because when traveling with a one-year-old, you are somewhat limited in your options. Time passed quickly and I had to quickly choose a place to go. The thing is, I never go any place alone. I love family and so when I travel, I bring my sister, her husband, her children, my
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