SLEIGHT OF HAND

A hypnotic display of brilliance and masterful engineering, Franck Muller's Round Triple Mystery replaces hands with three rotating discs.

- By CANDICE CHAN

It is said that time waits for no man, but Franck Muller has made a career out of bending it to its will.

The independent Swiss watchmaker is renowned for defying convention. The Giga Tourbillon and Grand Central Tourbillon, for instance, take precision to dramatic extremes, while Crazy Hours reorders the numerals entirely even as it keeps perfect time. With the Mystery, introduced in the early 1990s, Franck Muller simplified time display to a single rotating disc as a subtle act of horological rebellion. It was a quiet tribute to the fluid rhythms of time and, above all, to its enduring mystery.

In the Mystery concept, time is experienced at one's own rhythm based on a cross-cultural encounter shaped by co-founder Franck Muller. With cultures approaching time differently, some embracing it rather than chasing it, and others allowing it to unfold at its own pace, he sought to encapsulate this philosophy in his timepieces.