Urban Jürgensen, one of the great watchmakers of horology’s golden age, returns to Danish hands.
Among the great horological names that come from the 18th and 19th centuries, the ones that loom largest are Breguet and Arnold, Patek and Philippe, Audemars and Piguet, and Vacheron and Constantin. But there is another great watchmaker who merits mention right alongside them. Urban Jürgensen, whose eponymous manufacture has crafted timepieces continuously since the late 18th century, touts a multigenerational story that weaves through various European countries, including Switzerland and the Jürgensen family’s native Denmark. Along the way, Jürgensen plied his trade with the likes of John Arnold and Abraham-Louis Breguet, earning his contemporaries’ respect while sharing in the achievements of horology’s gilded era.
Today, Urban Jürgensen remains a niche, independent watchmaker that produces timepieces numbering in the low hundreds. The company’s management is headed by Søren Jenry Petersen, a longtime Nokia executive who cofounded the telecom giant’s luxury Vertu division. While it’s surprising that a figure from the world of technology would invest his time and money into a decidedly analog cause, Petersen is convinced that luxury mechanical watchmaking has a very bright future. The ones who will thrive, he asserts, will be true practitioners of craftsmanship who can transparently communicate their values to their customers. Petersen illustrated this point while visiting the Watch Journal offices in New York this October.
“A brand can say that its products are rare and limited, produced in an atelier by a handful of specialized craftsmen, but clients can quickly form their own opinions about the scope of a company’s activities in the age of Google Earth. If they see a large industrial complex and parking lot for 500 cars, they see straight through the marketing.”
Given the nature of social media and online watch retailers today, it’s almost quaint that Petersen discovered Urban Jürgensen while physically shopping for a well-known top brand perpetual calendar in his native Denmark back in 1996. The shop manager suggested that a discerning collector in search of an exceptional, complicated gentleman’s wristwatch should also have a look at Urban Jürgensen. The rest is history. Petersen purchased the watch, dove right into learning about the company’s history, and eventually almost 20 years later ended up acquiring the brand with a team of Danish investors.
Real Craftsmanship
It’s clear when touching and feeling an Urban Jürgensen timepiece that there is a high degree of quality handwork that goes far beyond what is typical of most modern watchmaking. Fine finishing is applied throughout the range of in-house movements powering the timepieces—a look through the sapphire crystal caseback with a loupe provides ample evidence of this. Urban Jürgensen also has its very own escapement of the detent variety, a rarity among small watch companies not associated with a large group.
The Urban Jürgensen range has incorporated dials produced in the Grenage technique—a rare and difficult type of dial-making—in recent releases. Each dial begins with a flat plate of solid fine silver, before all dial markers are done as engravings and then hand filled with enamel lacquer, which is then polished down to a flat surface. Finally, a mix of silver powder, salts, oils and other ingredients are hand brushed onto the surface, creating a frosty pearled surface. These dials therefore are all unique. The effect, is as rich as any high-end watch display produced in Switzerland. Other Urban Jürgensen dials are made in solid one-piece fine silver patterned hand-guilloche in the few workshops remaining in Switzerland who still master this trade—some on old Rose Engine machines originating from Urban Jürgensen.
Speaking of independent master watchmakers, Søren Petersen recalls a visit from none other than Philippe Dufour to the Urban Jürgensen BaselWorld stand in 2015. The man who is perhaps the greatest living watchmaker, with a cult following to show for it, took up one of Urban Jürgensen’s watches, turned it over to look at the movement´s finishing, and immediately proceeded to take his own watch off and do a direct comparison. When Dufour handed the watch back with an approving nod, Petersen told his team, “I think we’re doing just fine, guys.”
Approval has been coming from other influential corners of Swiss watchmaking too, perhaps most visibly the Geneva Grand Prix, known to horophiles as the Oscars of watchmaking. For the upcoming 2016 Grand Prix, Urban Jürgensen has been selected as a finalist in the gentleman’s dress watch category. Its reference 2340 will compete among other standout men’s dress pieces for the prestigious award—one that Urban Jürgensen won in 2014 with its Ref. 1142 Detent Central Seconds timepiece. This year the Ref. 2340 is also up for the Aiguille d’Or, the most prestigious award of the Grand Prix, given to the competition’s best overall watch.
The nominated watch, the second in the new Jules collection, is a tasteful white gold dress watch with Grenage dial and moon phase display, and a power reserve indication. Its harmonious proportions and relative simplicity—paired with its traditionally crafted dial and hands—represent what might just be the platonic ideal of the wristwatch.
This is a brand that spends lots of time and money on details that other companies often overlook, or have industrialized. Like all Urban Jürgensen wristwatches, the Ref. 2340 features hands that are made in a time-honored tradition. Each hand on an Urban Jürgensen timepiece is individually crafted. Their blue hue is imparted not by a chemical bath, but through the natural thermal process. The surfaces are themselves polished by hand, and the center canons are crafted from gold and produced individually on a precision lathe. The Jules Ref. 2340 comes in white gold and costs 43,100 CHF.
The other major Urban Jürgensen introduction in the Jules collection is the Ref. 2240. It represents the same more contemporary approach to traditional watch design for the brand. Whereas previous Urban Jürgensen wristwatches have utilized vintage-style teardrop lugs, the new Jules Collection has “Corne de Vache” inspired tapered horns that are more likely to be found on a gentleman’s dress watch of today.
The 40 mm diameter of the 2240 and 2340 are right about where a fine gold dress watch ought to land. One senses that these watches will continue to look great and wear well far into the future, rewarding their owners as they reveal more small, elusive details over time. The Jules Ref. 2240 retails for 29,100 CHF.
The movement that powers Ref. 2240, which is also the base movement powering the Grand Prix-nominated 2340, is the in-house P4 manually wound caliber with Swiss lever escapement. It vibrates at 21,600 bph, and its finely finished côtes de Genève base plate is expressed in a rayonet style, in which the waves flair outward from the escapement. Two barrels combine to provide the movement with 60 hours of power reserve.
A Perpetual Calendar
In addition to the modernized Jules collection, Urban Jürgensen presented one of its more complicated timepieces to date in the Reference 1741 Perpetual Calendar, which comes crafted in a 41 mm platinum case. This complex watch is also based on the company’s in-house, manually wound Caliber P4. The timepiece is the first model to appear in the Jürgensen 1745 collection, which takes its name from the birth year of the company’s founder, Jürgen Jürgensen. The collection’s core feature is the teardrop lugs that have become a calling card of the Urban Jürgensen brand.
Like the aforementioned new watches in the Jules collection, Reference 1741 has a Grenage dial, crafted in a multi-part process that results in a textured silver surface with engraved text made via lacquer fillings. However, in the case of this perpetual calendar masterpiece, the hours are indicated with white gold Breguet-style numerals of the finest quality. The Jürgensen Collection Ref. 1741 in platinum is priced at 91,200 CHF.
Petersen was coy regarding the collection he plans to show at BaselWorld 2017, but if recent history is any indicator, collectors can expect Urban Jürgensen to continue to concentrate on techniques and materials that are traditional to watchmaking, but slightly off the radar for most amateur horophiles. —Jonathan Bues