Manufacture d'horlogerie: Franck Muller

Manufacture d'horlogerie. Manufacture d'horlogerie is a term reserved for  watch manufacturers that make all or most of the parts required for their movements in their own production facilities as opposed to assembling watches using parts purchased from other firms. For reasons of their in-house expertize companies classified as manufacture d'horlogerie are generally considered to be the elite of the watch making industry.

Master of complication. Franck Muller is Swiss watchmaker probably best known today for his curved tonneau watches with their modern style arabic numerals. However, in watchmaking circles, Franck Muller is best known for creating complicated timepieces. The slogan, "Master of Complications" carried by his brand of watches is well deserved.

Franck Muller is a master watchmaker. Franck Muller graduated from the Swiss school of watchmaking, the  Ecole d'Horlogerie de Genève, in 1985. After graduation Franck Muller worked as a watchmaker repairing and restoring fine complication watches. 

 

A Franck Muller Cintree Curvex, a watch which

is representative of what most people associate with a Frank Muller

 

It was probably his work with complicated timepieces, that caused him to become passionate about their mechanisms. Rather than join one of the established watch manufacturers, Franck Muller chose to blaze his own trail build his own workshop. In 1983 he built a Tourbillon watch, something at the time that could only be built by top-watchmakers like Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constatin and Breguet. In 1986 Frank Muller created a Tourbillon with jumping hours, a  year later a Tourbillon with Minute Repeater, and in 1989 inverted Tourbillon with Minute Repeater and Perpetual Calendar. 

 

In 1992 Franck Muller opened his own company, and in the same year created a watch which his peers granted the exclusive title of "most complicated wristwatch in the world":  a Grande and Petite Sonnerie, Minute Repeater for the hours, quarters and minutes, a Perpetual Calendar programmed to the year 2100 with date, day of the week, month and monthly retrograde equation, leap-year cycle, 24-hour moon phase indicator, indicator of the internal temperature of the mechanism.

 

100% In-house. Not all Franck Muller creations use in-house movements. ETA movements are used in the more basic watches in the Franck Muller collection, but his more complicated watches use movements developed and built in-house. 

A Franck Muller complication wristwatch incorporating a Grande and Petite Sonnerie with 3 positions, a Minute Repeater, a Perpetual Calendar with retrograde monthly equation, 24-hour indicator, a split-second Chronograph with 60-minute timer, a flying Tourbillon, indicator of the internal temperature of the mechanism, power-reserve striking-mechanism, power-reserve movement.