Review: the Furlan Marri Disco Volante

Things have changed an awful lot since the last time I reviewed a watch by Furlan Marri. That was all the way back in March 2021, and it was their debut release. It’s worth pointing out that at the time, the brand had virtually no public footprint, and I had to be somewhat cajoled into taking the assignment. But the humble, meca-quartz chronograph that put them on the map was genuinely impressive in the way it conveyed vintage watch design codes in an affordable package that, somehow, felt premium. I remember thinking that for the price Furlan Marri was asking for that watch (a pre-order deal of $330) you’d be hard pressed to find anything with better finishing or a more coherent point of view about what it’s trying to accomplish. 

Just a few years later, and Furlan Marri is in a very different position. It happened fast. Those meca-quartz chronos hit the market and were an immediate sensation, getting the thumbs up from John Goldberger and other notable collectors. It put an immediate heir of legitimacy around Furlan Marri, something that the best small brands get eventually, but not typically with such speed. When your debut watch, a battery powered homage that costs a few hundred dollars, is selling for many times its retail price on the secondary market, heads start turning rather quickly. 

It would have been easy for Furlan Marri to simply rinse and repeat. Brands that have had similar fast starts, including brands that I like an awful lot, have recycled their big hits for longer than the three years Furlan Marri has been in existence. But they clearly had a plan all along, dropping new watches, both limited editions and regular production pieces, at sensible intervals that make it clear to observers that this is a real company making real things, and not some fly-by-night operation. 

And oh yeah, they made a perpetual calendar as well. And not just a perpetual calendar – a secular perpetual calendar, a complication so rare it had many of us who have been around this stuff for years looking for clarification on exactly what it does. We wrote about it here, and I encourage you to read about it in detail, but the key thing to remember is that it’s the rare mechanical complication that does something you will likely not be alive to see. Is there a bigger watchmaking flex? 

This is all to say that their latest watch, the Disco Volante, arrives at a time when the brand seems to be hitting their stride. They are fully out of that initial “new brand” phase and have firmly established themselves in the watch community. When I first saw the Disco Volante, it was a brief meeting with the brand during Watches & Wonders week, when they were exhibiting at the Beau Rivage hotel. We also see them at our Windup events, which I think says a lot about both Furlan Marri, the impressive lineup of bands we’re able to curate for our own shows, and their wide reach. 

The essence of the DIsco Volante is something many brands have played with before. The case shape, reminiscent of a UFO as imagined by Golden Age science fiction (“disco volante” is Italian for “flying saucer”) is seen frequently in Art Deco watches, with notable references produced by Audemars Piguet, Vacheron Constantin, Omega, and others. The idea of a circular, disc-like case without any visible lugs is one that I think appeals to many for its inherent symmetry and simplicity. It’s a case that’s literally reduced to the bare essentials. 

Furlan Marri has done something smart with their version of the Disco Volante, and that’s size it up for a modern consumer. This watch measures 38mm in diameter and is just a hair under 9mm tall. If you look at vintage Disco Volantes from almost any brand, you’ll find they tend to be quite a bit smaller, often in that 34-36m range. 

If Furlan Marri had decided to stay true to the sizing of the vintage examples they’ve been inspired by (something they’ve done throughout their releases to this point, I’d argue), this watch would have been far too small for me to wear without it looking kind of ridiculous, and I think many others with wrists in that 7 inches and up range would feel similarly. As it stands, a 38mm watch (that’s also super thin) without lugs adding any additional visual or actual heft, feels small but appropriately so. As I wore it around for about a week, I found that it reminded me somewhat of wearing a vintage watch (not surprising) and that having a watch of this size on my wrist is just very pleasant. It might be the smallest wearing 38mm watch I can think of, which is a significant point in its favor.

I find myself talking about this a lot in reviews, but I seem to keep reviewing watches that are, at least according to conventional wisdom, a little small for me. What I want to say here, and what I always want to say, really, is that few things in life are as dull and brain rotting as conventional wisdom. I’m 6 feet tall and have a large wrist that sometimes causes the jeweler down the street to audibly wonder if he should even take a link out when I ask him to size a new bracelet for me. If you’ve been poisoned to think that the span of a watch simply must cross the entirety of the top of your wrist, a watch like this is not going to be your bag. But if you’re open minded, and understand that this is how watches looked on people for decades, you might be pleasantly surprised by how a watch like the Disco Volante can be worked into a rotation. 

The Disco Volante has a lot going for it besides its size, but I found myself thinking about the way the pendulum in the watch community is swinging back to medium and truly small watches as of late. This watch seems to be arriving at the right time, when other design forward watches that are even smaller than the Disco Volante, like the Anoma that Zach reviewed here and the debut release from Toledano & Chan, are finding their admirers. I don’t know if these more moderately sized watches are a trend that will have an endpoint, or if the idea of brands making watches in this size and every other size as a way to offer a real breadth of choice to consumers is a new norm, but it’s been gratifying to see watches like the ones I’ve mentioned and many more gain wide acceptance. It really does feel like the knee-jerk “It’s too small” reactions are dissipating in a meaningful way as collectors branch out and realize there’s a whole world under 39mm to explore. 

The case itself is quite intricate and anything but a simple lugless circle, with multiple steps that play up the Art Deco themes and separate this watch a bit from vintage Discos, which were often flatter without the case definition you see here. I wouldn’t say that the multi-step design adds any real heft or presence with the watch on the wrist, but it works well visually in my opinion, and seems to be in line with the subtly complex casework Furlan Marri does so well on their three-hand sector dials.

And that sector dial format is a theme that runs through the Disco Volante as well, and now feels like a calling card of Furlan Marri’s house design language. I was sent the “Celeste” (blue) and “Verde” (green) references, and they’re also producing a third variant in a “Havana” colorway that combines brown and salmon tones. The blue and green dials are similar in that they have light colored interior with darker tones making up the hour and minute tracks, with a similarly sectored running seconds indicator at the 6:00 position. 

The sector dial has gone from a vintage inspired novelty to a design trope that’s well understood, and even expected, in a relatively short amount of time. I’ve always been drawn to sector dials as they appeal to what I think is a natural desire for symmetry, and it offers brands an opportunity to get creative with dial construction and finishing. Here, the hour and minute tracks have been given a nice brushed finish that adds some unexpected texture and visual interest to the dial. Everything is crisp and well executed, and I found both the green and blue variants to be very satisfying visually, but the Celeste gets extra points for the use of a very bright white BGW9 lume compound along the lines that separate the sectors. This is a very cool touch, and while some might find it to be a little out of place on a vintage inspired watch, I think it’s a good reminder that even though Furlan Marri is inspired by the past, they are very much a modern brand and have the flexibility to be a little whimsical. A decision like this underscores the obvious in that they aren’t making one to one recreations of anything in particular, but playing with expectations of what a vintage inspired watch should be. 

The Disco Volante runs on the Peseux 7001 manually wound movement. This is a widely used caliber that has been in production for many years, and feels like a great choice for a watch like this. Furlan Marri has put a lot of work into the finishing of the movement, which goes well beyond spec for the 7001, and features polished bevels, black polished screws, and other adornments. It’s not mind-blowing or anything, but it’s a lot better than what anyone has a right to expect on a watch at this price point, and speaks to the brand’s overall attention to getting the small details right. 

This has been a year of big swings from small brands, and it feels like 2024 could be remembered as a time when outfits that we used to think of as “microbrands” stepped more formally into “independent” territory. I’m personally still grappling with what these terms and designations really mean in today’s watch landscape, and I certainly don’t wish to denigrate any brand or creator who proudly embraces the “microbrand” label, but you can sense a new category of ambitious small brands beginning to emerge, and in Furlan Marri’s case, mature, as they push boundaries of creativity and craft. The Disco Volante might be as immediately flashy a release as something like the Toledano & Chan piece mentioned earlier, but it’s part of the same conversation and representative of a genuinely interesting and promising brand coming into its own and making exactly the type of watch they’ve set out to on their own terms. Furlan Marri