Founded in 1992 by the eponymous watchmaker, Franck Muller celebrates its 30th anniversary next year. And just in time for the occasion, the brand has transformed its flagship boutique in Singapore into a pop-up museum.

The Franck Muller Museum – A Horological Journey is now open until March 20, 2022. The exhibits include not just the brand’s notable historical timepieces watches  but even Mr Muller’s own watchmaking bench from Franck Muller Watchland in Geneva (pictured above).

The exhibition is taking place at the brand’s boutique in Wisma Atria

A story of success

Once a struggling independent watchmaker – he was one of the earliest AHCI members in fact – Franck Muller founded a brand that is global. Best known for its tonneau-shaped Cintree Curves case and imaginative complications like Crazy Hours and Master Banker, Franck Muller has a string of “World Premieres” to its name.

They refer to the never-seen-before complications or combinations of complications that the brand unveiled almost every year from its founding. Amongst the World Premieres was the first triple-axis tourbillon wristwatch in 2004 and then in 2007 the Aeternitas Mega, a monumental watch that was the most complicated wristwatch ever at the time of its launch.

A World Premiere Grand Complication from the late 1990s

The more recent Grand Central Tourbillon in the Cintree Curvex case

Because of its often over the top style, the brand is sometimes underrated by watch enthusiasts, despite having a vertically integrated manufacture, a stable of in-house movements, as well as an all-star cast of watchmakers who have worked there.

They include Pierre-Michel Golay, who was best known for developing the Grand Sonnerie as well as the thinnest-ever minute repeater during his quarter-century tenure at Gerald Genta, and also Michel Navas, now one of the leaders of Louis Vuitton’s complications workshop, La Fabrique du Temps.

An exploded view of the segments inside the mega-complicated Aeternitas

Franck Muller has certainly made its mark on the industry, especially independent watchmaking. The tonneau case was invented by Cartier in the early 20th century, but made famous by Mr Muller in the 1990s with the Cintree Curvex. One of the hottest watches of the period, it was distinctive and attractive, enough that it is arguably the inspiration behind most tonneau watches of today, even Richard Mille.

More broadly, Mr Muller showed it was possible to make a living – and even make a fortune – as an independent watchmaker. He made Franck Muller a brand separate from the person, while the brand has stayed independent all the way. In fact, right from the beginning, he and his business partner Vartan Sirmakes were independent in almost even sense of the word, from building their own compound in Genthod to staging their own watch fair, World Presentation of Haute Horlogerie (WPHH).

Exhibition details