A twenty of plenty
Urwerk is one-part classical watchmaking, one-part fine artistry. These parts have names: Felix Baumgartner and Martin Frei. “It’s a collaboration. It starts with a dialogue about time, about watches.” After two decades of making timepieces together, Baumgartner and Frei must have had many, many such conversations. The result is an atelier of high horology not so much interested in the research of new ways of telling time, but one diligently incorporating state of the art technology into its timepieces.
Take for example, the Timehunter X-Ray which features a computer with which to check the accuracy of the movement. The user could then advance or retard the timing as needed. “And in doing so they would then become a watchmaker, the first time the customer could be part of this process” says Baumgartner.
For this year’s Salon de la Haute Horlogerie 2017, Urwerk introduces the UR-106 Flower Power – limited to 11 pieces – is natural poetry in a mechanical jewellery timepiece, featuring diamond-set flowers cast in white gold mounted on the carousel. A moonphase indicator is present, while on the case and crown are 239 Top Wesselton diamonds making up 2.53 carats in all.
For men, Urwerk proposes the 30-piece UR-T8 Transformer, with a reversible case that protects the time display beneath a highly textured titanium shield. Think extreme version of the iconic Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso, with the automatic UR 8.01 calibre working within. “When you design a case, a case is supposed to protect what’s inside. We then drew inspiration from the concept of an armour or a shield, which does exactly this,” says Frei.
“We’re interested in exploring, to be avant garde. We don’t study the market to see what is needed, we just make what we want to make. However, tradition will always have its place, as Audemars Piguet says you have to know the rules before you break them. The idea is to go a little bit away from the beaten track but still maintain the culture and the tradition,” says Baumgartner, who was raised on a constant stream of old clocks passing through his childhood home to be restored by his father.
Frei, on the other hand, provides a balance with his completely artistic background – in sculpting and painting to name some trades. “When I look at all the aspects that come together in a watch, the theme, I do it with the eyes of an artist. Looking beyond the function. A watch to me is a philosophical machine, a strange one which we can rethink and reconfigure as we please. Of course it still has to tell the time.”
“We had to change something, this is what we decided over 20 years ago. Contemporary watchmaking is in demand, and there was all the comfort we needed to get to work.”
“Furthermore, our atelier has a voluntary limitation of 150 watches per year, a practice spanning for over a decade. In Urwerk, it’s not about growing in output volume, its about growing in our watchmaking,” Baumgartner concludes.
