F.P. Journe's "FFC (Francis Ford Coppola) Blue" was born from an idea by director Coppola.

In 2021, a prototype made exclusively for Only Watch was sold for the high price of approximately 560 million yen. A second model will be produced in 2023 with a platinum case. The hands that indicate the time were carved from titanium to reduce the weight of the parts.

FP Journe "FFC Blue"

The birth of FFC Blue

The birth of the FFC Blue is like a fairy tale, and one well worth knowing. In early 2009, Eleanor Coppola, wife of Francis Ford Coppola, presented her husband, the renowned film director, with a chic Chronomètre d'Ésonance. Coppola was so delighted with the gift that he immediately invited its creator, François-Paul Journe, to his home on his Inglenook vineyard in Napa Valley. In 2012, they discussed different ways of expressing the passage of time.

　Coppola then asked Journe if any watchmakers had ever considered a way to display time the way our ancestors counted on their fingers. How could you display the numbers 1 to 12 using just five fingers? Inspired by this idea, in 2014 François-Paul Journe decided he wanted to take on the challenge and invent a moving hand that would display the time in this way. Inspired, he began working on a prototype of the FFC Blue that same year, and the watch was auctioned at Only Watch in 2021, where it fetched a high price.

Controlling limited energy

　To guarantee a five-day power reserve using only the energy supplied by the barrel, a remontoire was installed between the main and display trains, like a pendulum clock set in a tower with its long, heavy hands. Forty minutes every hour, the remontoire, which consists of a leaf spring, actuator, and a sort of anchor on one side of a central gear with an eccentric piece housed inside the open beehive-like barrel, is wound by the movement.

　Described by François-Paul Journe as a type of escapement that operates once per hour, this mechanism is released on the hour. The stored energy from the main barrel, coupled with a fork-shaped element that operates in contact with it, moves a series of ten cams, controlling the movement of the hand's fingers. These cams can be viewed from a fixed cursor on the left side of the hand, between a rotating minute ring mounted on a large, extra-flat ball bearing at 12 o'clock. They complete one rotation every 12 hours, each operating a spring or lever that controls the lifting and lowering of four fingers and the translational movement of the thumb. The unique toothed cams allow the fingers to move with near-friction, like a shuttlecock, attached to a steel sling.

　This ingenious system ensures that the energy required to activate one finger, or all four fingers (from 5 to 6 o'clock and 9 to 10 o'clock), is always uniform and determined to ensure that these activations are safe and do not affect timekeeping accuracy.

It is made with the same thickness as conventional automatic models.

　Despite this complexity, the watch is the same thickness as a model with a conventional automatic movement. To achieve this feat, François-Paul Journe dispensed with a dial and replaced the traditional hour and minute hands with rotating rings mounted on large ball bearings, a modification he had already made for the Astronomic Souverain annual calendar. This modification freed up a few millimeters of space for the articulated hands, sculpted by a master engraver.