Exclusive to the Asia Pacific region, Franck Muller has created a new take on its iconic Long Island timepiece.
You might not know this but Franck Muller released its first Long Island three-hand timepiece all the way back in the year 2000. The watch’s rounded rectangular case, with its gentle curved form, short lugs, and arched numerals, paid tribute to the Art Deco era and quickly became a popular model among collectors.
This year, the watchmaker has released a modern evolution on the Long Island, with a new design that retains the silhouette of the original, which was conceptualised by the brand’s co-founder Vartan Sirmakes, while injecting a new dynamism that highlights its curves, angles, and fine lines.
Compared with the original Long Island design, the new case incorporates an additional inner case that secures the shaped movements driving the watch. Franck Muller is one of the few watchmakers that can develop movements designed to precisely fit each case, because it designs, engineers, and produces its cases, dials, and movements independently at Watchland.
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Shaped movements completely utilise all of the space within the watch case, making them more appealing visually, but are also a challenge to configure and engineer. The additional inner case of the Long Island Evolution offers added security and shock protection to the movement. The multi-layered construction also offers one benefit – it enables the sapphire crystal protecting the display of the watch to be attached to the flange without any visible fixing screws.
The aluminium inner case is anodised in an eye-catching pine green colour, while the titanium outer case has a black PVD treatment with satin-brushing. Luxurious alligator leather straps in matte black featuring contrast stitching and edges in the same pine green are paired with the new Long Island cases, creating a continuous green line that encircles the entire watch on both sides.
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A Ground-breaking Complication
The newest iteration of the Long Island comes in three versions. For the Long Island Evolution Master Jumper, limited to 100 pieces, the watch brand has created a new ‘triple jumping’ complication with numerical displays for the hours, minutes, and date. While triple jumping displays are not new in high watchmaking, they relate only to calendar functions in perpetual calendars – there has never been a watch with three numerical indications for the time and date functions combined.
Jumping hour watches have existed since the 19th century but a complete numerical display of time in a mechanical watch only emerged in 2009. The Long Island Evolution Master Jumper goes even further with a new vertical and equidistant jumping display, featuring three windows arranged in a column down the middle of the watch case, with the hours at the top, the minutes in the middle, and the date at the 6 o’clock position. The minutes and date windows each use two separate discs for the tens and ones, both jumping at each decimal number. The hour window, on the other hand, employs one single disc to indicate the hours from ‘1’ to ‘12’. The watch’s five discs as well as the wheels that drive their motion are all visible through the front of the watch, via a supporting bridge with machined cutouts.
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In another first, the watchmaker has added an inner sapphire crystal at the level of the inner bezel, giving three-dimensional depth to the timepiece.
A Grand Tourbillon
The tourbillon is the most iconic design in haute horlogerie today, and the new Long Island Giga Tourbillon (above), limited to just eight pieces, features a cage of 20mm which occupies over half of the movement, with a three-pointed supporting bridge that is closely mirrored in the bridges of the barrels that hold four mainsprings in total, and an all-black treatment that matches the titanium case. Two Super-LumiNova filled hands indicate the hours and minutes, with the oversized tourbillon doubling as a running seconds counter.
A Steadfast Classic
To round off the collection, a third three-hand model has Benn equipped with the hand-wound FM 1745 calibre in a fully skeletonised design. With a seven-day power reserve and a precise oscillator running at a steady 18,000vph, the Long Island Evolution 7 Days Power Reserve (above), limited to 300 pieces, hearkens back to classic pocket watch movements, but it has been given a novel and bold makeover that fits the new Long Island case to a ‘T’.
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The bridges of the movement are fully skeletonised to maximise the view of the movement through the sapphire crystal, with a small seconds counter at the bottom of the display that’s perfectly balanced with the enormous mainspring above it. The gear train and winding gears are also partially revealed, and can be further discovered through the back of the watch. Above the movement, large Arabic hour numerals painted with luminous material indicate the time clearly; turn off the lights and enjoy the view of this watch in glowing detail.
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