Review: Furlan Marri Havana Salmon

In 2021, the coveted “Revelation” watch prize, awarded annually at the hallowed GPHG to a young, upcoming watch brand, was not given to a watchmaking genius or an emerging master of their craft. Instead, it went to a brand whose watches are made in Hong Kong, contain a Japanese quartz movement and are a straight copy of a classic Patek Philippe. Did the judges all suffer a knock on the head, or is there something else going on? Let’s find out.

The Looks

Rewind to 1952, to the Swiss workshop of Patek Philippe, and there you’ll find a watch being made that looks remarkably like this one. With a twin sub-dial display, salmon backdrop and a tachymeter around the border, Patek Philippe’s Ref. 1463 is surely one of the most attractive chronographs ever made. Stands to reason then that it would also serve as the basis for Furlan Marri’s Havana Salmon, right down to the Roman numerals at twelve and six.

It’s such a good-looking watch that even Patek Philippe itself continues to seek inspiration from it, today’s 5172 borrowing the knurled pusher finish that adds a dash of flair to the fifties original. The Havana Salmon doesn’t so much borrow from the 1463 as it does walk out with everything but the kitchen sink, for a look and feel that is as distinctly Patek Philippe as the Patek Philippe itself.

The first instinct is to criticise the lack of originality of Furlan Marri, and many have. The 1463 already exists. The problem is that same salmon-dialled 1463 was offered at auction in 2019 with an estimate of around half a million dollars. See the problem?

It’s time to separate the difference between watch collecting and watch ownership. Collecting is a thoughtful and often prohibitively expensive game that requires a head full of knowledge and a gut full of steel. A wrong move could be the difference between purchasing a historical legend or Trigger’s watch. Ownership, on the other hand, does exactly what is says on the tin. You buy, you own, you enjoy, no stress needed.

So, if you have $500 and you want to enjoy the beguiling proportions of a Ref.1463, then Furlan Marri has your back. This isn’t the only watch on the market at this price point that deigns to offer such an experience, but as far as I’m concerned this is the one that gets the proportions closest—or at least, the most satisfying.

You may well disagree, but after years of searching, the Furlan Marri is the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a proper 1950s chronograph look without any disappointingly odd proportions. You know what I mean—the weirdly squashed sub-dials or oversized bezel that you try your hardest to ignore but it just never quite sits right. This watch has none of that. At 38mm wide and 11.3mm thick, the way it looks is almost impossible to criticize. It is, dare I say it, perhaps even better-looking than the original.

The Movement

Here’s where things get extra spicy, because what really separates the collectors from the owners is what’s hiding inside the Furlan Marri: a battery. For many people, taking an iconic Patek Philippe mechanical chronograph design and powering it with a battery is like buying an 11th century castle and putting a “Live, Laugh, Love” sticker on the wall. They would sooner see a watch like this at the bottom of the ocean than with a quartz movement.

And do you know what? Part of me agrees with them. Would this watch be better with a hand-crafted, hand-finished, hand-wound Lemania in the back? You bet it would. Would it be more expensive than I can afford? By a factor of ten. Congratulations—we’ve just invented the Roger Dubuis Hommage H40.

But let’s go back to what an owner might want: that Patek Philippe look and feel for $500. How have Furlan Marri achieved that? Amongst other things, by equipping it with a Japanese Seiko VK64 mecaquartz chronograph. In the spirit of straight-and-to-the-point watch ownership, a mecaquartz movement quite simply combines a quartz base with a mechanical chronograph module, giving the advantage of a satisfying mechanical feel to the chronograph with the convenience and value of quartz.

It’s a budget favourite for young brands looking for a pleasing halfway house, but its origins go back a little further, to Seiko’s 1982 7A28. This was the height of the quartz boom, and when it came to making a chronograph, it made perfect sense to add an existing technology—the mechanical chronograph module—straight to the base quartz movement. Seiko weren’t the only watchmaker to think so, with Swiss giants like Jaeger-LeCoultre and IWC following suit. Of course, a fully electronic quartz movement was inevitable, being more efficient and less costly, but thanks to its pleasingly analogue feel, the mecaquartz is here to stay.

So, if a quartz movement isn’t too bitter a pill to swallow and you’d rather not let your wrist go naked instead, then the VK64 Seiko will do you just fine—although you might be wondering why on earth the right-hand sub-dial reads up to twenty-four instead of twelve. It’s not an hour counter for the chronograph, it’s a twenty-four-hour dial for the main time display. Annoyingly useless and a waste of chronograph functionality, I thought initially—until I remembered that I’d never actually used the hour function on a single chronograph I’ve ever owned. For $500, I’m sure I could live with it.

The Quality

So far, so generic. Why spend $500 on this when a Dan Henry 1937, with the same look and the same movement, costs almost half the price. Well, this is where the Furlan Marri pulls out its trump card, one that might have perhaps been played a little too subtly.

Furlan Marri, you see, is the brainchild of Andrea Furlan and Hamad Al Marri, two men who bring two distinct skillsets to a joint passion to create something special. Marri is the business brains of the operation, as well as an esteemed collector, and Furlan is a designer, who’s skills have been honed at the legendary Renaud et Papi.

So, that trump card: what exactly is it? Spend time with the Havana Salmon, and eventually it becomes clear. What both Furlan and Marri realised was that with the enormous focus on what a world class watch is like on the inside, how it performed on the outside was being overlooked, and as such the market only offered two choices: thoroughly budget or altogether high-end. What the duo decided to do was combine the two: budget on the inside and high-end on the outside.

It’s a trend that’s beginning to take hold in the Far East as well with renowned Japanese watchmaker Hajime Asaoka founding the more affordable Kurono Tokyo with a focus on external quality and attention to detail, and it’s the same attitude Furlan Marri has applied to the Havana Salmon.

It really is all in the detail. Those knurled pushers from that Patek Philippe 1463 make an appearance here too, for example, along with the lugs that gracefully curve in and roll under. It would be cheaper for the pushers to be smooth and the lugs flat—as is the case with the Dan Henry—but that’s the kind of detail that makes the Furlan Marri different from its affordable competition. Even the brushed case middle sandwiched by a polished, stepped bezel and case back subtly add to the impact of this watch.

The dial is where the magic really happens. The hands are deeply curved and polished mirror smooth. They have a liquidity to them that just can’t be replicated by punching out a shape from flat metal sheets. The markers too are solid and sturdy, crisply defined and well-finished. The circular grain on the sub-dials and the print overall are equally impressive, and together, through the anti-reflective coated domed sapphire crystal, offer a clarity that just isn’t typical for $500. It’s not perfect, but it’s impressive.

And that’s the secret sauce. Otherwise, it’s just a copycat watch with a Japanese movement made in Hong Kong. Yeah, they say it’s designed in Switzerland, but that’s soon replicated with a $50 plane ticket and a pad and pencil. Where the bulk of the $500 goes is in packaging this whole thing together in an experience that is usually well out of reach for people shopping at this budget. I told you it’s subtle, and it really is. On the one hand, there will be those who say this watch is too expensive for the specification listed on paper. On the other, you’ll have people say it lacks a mechanism that makes most luxury watches special. But for everyone else in between, what you get is a watch that offers an ownership experience that does something truly unique.

So why did this watch win at the GPHG? After all, there are plenty of young watchmakers out there doing all this and more, who are creating watches that are surely going to be the collector’s items of the future. It’s difficult to be sure, but were I a judge on that panel, I’d be looking at the Furlan Marri with not just the collector’s perspective in mind, but the owner’s as well. And, thanks to the care that’s been given to the way it looks, it truly is a watch I’d like to own.