The watch dial is one of the few artistic formats that simultaneously imposes constraints related to surface area, readability, and movement. On a Crazy Hours watch, it adds a fourth: the hour markers move.
Franck Muller developed the Crazy Hours as a mechanical hour-jump complication. The principle behind it: the numbers one through twelve are arranged in a non-sequential order on the dial. Every hour, the hour index jumps to the corresponding position—not by moving sequentially, but by leaping directly to its destination. The time remains accurate; it is the logical sequence of progression that is disrupted. Since 1991 and the founding of the Manufacture in Genthod, this complication has been among those that have built Franck Muller’s reputation in the field of unconventional mechanisms—a brand that boasts more than fifty world firsts, from the first three-axis tourbillon to the most complicated wristwatch ever produced.
For this version, created in collaboration with Jisbar, twelve elements drawn from the artist’s work were selected, deconstructed, and then reassembled to occupy these moving positions. Each hour marker becomes a graphic fragment—typography, pattern, or shape—extracted from existing works and adapted to the scale of the dial. The result is a composition over which the artist has no complete control: the mechanism decides, at each hour, which part of his visual vocabulary is in the foreground.
“A watch face is the most restrictive format there is. That’s also why it’s the most exciting—when art fits within 32 millimeters, it becomes portable,” says Jisbar. The approach is precise: it’s not about scaling down a work, but about thinking within those constraints from the very beginning.
The version presented at WPHH 2026 is available in two sizes—32 mm and 35 mm—on a white, steel, or gold bracelet. A total of 150 pieces will be produced: 25 gold pieces per size and 50 steel pieces per size. The case back bears the individual serial number and the engraved signatures of both Houses.
The Crazy Hours Complication
The hour-jump mechanism relies on a cam and spring system that releases the hour hand at the precise moment the hour changes, without any intermediate movement. Unlike a digital display, the jump is purely mechanical—the abruptness of the movement is a design feature, not a visual effect.
The question this piece leaves open is that of the status of a work of art on a moving medium. Unlike a watch with a painted dial—where the image is fixed—the Crazy Hours distributes and redistributes its graphic elements according to a logic that the artist did not devise. The work is never the same for two consecutive hours. It is not a limited edition of a painting. It is something else—something that neither watchmaking nor contemporary art has yet fully defined.
Cette publication est également disponible en :
