My Story: Franck Muller, 1995 — Reflections of a Watchmaker
Based on an interview given by Franck Muller in 1995 (Revue FH), at the inauguration of his Genthod manufacture. Reimagined here in a reflective, timeless tone.
They once called me gifted. The word returns to me now like an echo through stone — flattering, mistaken, inevitable. Gifts are the invention of those who look back; what we call talent is often only perseverance, refined by solitude.
My beginnings were unremarkable: I was an apprentice among tiles and mortar, shaping walls without yet knowing that I would one day shape time itself. Craft was the only inheritance I ever desired. Watchmaking did not await me; it found me, as certain destinies do, quietly, without explanation.
At the Geneva School of Watchmaking, I learned that time, when disassembled, reveals not mystery but obedience. Its laws are exact, its patience infinite. The bench became my altar; the loupe, my monastic rule. I came to love the silence between two ticks — the pause where intention gathers. There are few sounds more profound than the steady heart of a movement that will continue long after its maker’s has ceased.
Now, as I walk through the corridors of the Château de Genthod, I feel both master and servant of what I have built. Under its roof we have gathered what was once scattered: the craftsman’s benches, the forges, the desks, the jeweler’s lamps. It is not a factory but a cloister of precision. The walls will remember us better than the world will. Here, men and women carve their days into minutes, and their minutes into the illusion of eternity.
Around me, the great manufactures tremble beneath the weight of their ancestry. Their histories are both crown and chain. I, who had none to begin with, moved more freely among them. There is a rare virtue in being born without lineage: one may act without apology, and fail without scandal. My watches carry no ghosts. They were conceived in an age of recovery, when the fever of excess had broken and the air grew clear again. Tradition was not my inheritance; it was my adversary.
Others built for expansion; I built for endurance. Three hundred pieces one year, eight hundred the next, three thousand now — small numbers, yet sufficient for meaning. To limit oneself is to preserve significance. Abundance annihilates mystery. Each watch that leaves my hands takes with it a measure of my own time; and that time is not renewable.
Those who seek my work may call it desire, but desire fades. What remains is discipline. My complications — the perpetual calendars, the repeaters, the tourbillons — were never meant as ornaments but as questions. To design a new mechanism is to argue with the divine. Every wheel, every spring, is a small defiance against dissolution. But even defiance decays. I have made watches that will run beyond my life; yet one day, even they will falter, and others — strangers, perhaps — will open them, tend to them, and understand nothing of the man who made them.
Fashion moves in restless circles. I have never chased it. The 1990s pretend to rediscover classical restraint, but nostalgia is only another form of vanity. I seek something older, rarer — permanence without stagnation, movement without frenzy. To make a watch worthy of inheritance is to accept death, and answer it with form. That, perhaps, is all art can do.
Soon, my boutique will open at the Tour de l’Ile, in the oldest heart of Geneva. The stones there have seen centuries of ambition rise and dissolve. I place my work among them as one lays an offering, knowing it will be swallowed by time yet hoping that, for an instant, it may gleam.
Looking back, I see no triumphs — only the long conversation between hand and matter. I moved from stone to brass, from mortar to gold, but the gesture remained unchanged: to impose order on chaos, knowing the futility of the attempt. Watchmaking, like life itself, is the art of measured failure. Perfection is unattainable; still, it must be pursued, for in that pursuit lies redemption.
When my name is no longer spoken, some of my watches will continue to mark the hours, indifferent to who made them. Their ticking will mingle with the murmur of the world, their balance wheels oscillating like small hearts that have forgotten their origin. That thought consoles me. To create is to disappear gracefully into what one has made.
About the Author
Sergio Galanti is an independent writer and brand strategist exploring the intersections of luxury, culture, and time. As editor of WatchDossier, he examines watchmaking through the lenses of craft, history, and strategy.
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