Urwerk
Encyclopedia
Urwerk is a watchmaking company, created in 1995 at a meeting of the two brothers, Felix and Thomas Baumgartner, both watchmaker
s, and their friend Martin Frei, an artist
and designer
. Their goal is the development and new conception of expensive watches. The company is based in Geneva
, Switzerland
.
ian city of Ur
, where people over 6000 years ago used giant sundials to measue time. Werk means to work, create, evolve, shape, etc. in the German language
. It is also a play on the German word "Uhrwerk", which is the German word for the movement used in watches.
Watchmaker
A watchmaker is an artisan who makes and repairs watches. Since virtually all watches are now factory made, most modern watchmakers solely repair watches. However, originally they were master craftsmen who built watches, including all their parts, by hand...
s, and their friend Martin Frei, an artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
and designer
Designer
A designer is a person who designs. More formally, a designer is an agent that "specifies the structural properties of a design object". In practice, anyone who creates tangible or intangible objects, such as consumer products, processes, laws, games and graphics, is referred to as a...
. Their goal is the development and new conception of expensive watches. The company is based in Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
.
The name
The name is creative and consists of two parts. Ur is an ancient SumerSumer
Sumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Mesopotamia, modern Iraq during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age....
ian city of Ur
Ur
Ur was an important city-state in ancient Sumer located at the site of modern Tell el-Muqayyar in Iraq's Dhi Qar Governorate...
, where people over 6000 years ago used giant sundials to measue time. Werk means to work, create, evolve, shape, etc. in the German language
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
. It is also a play on the German word "Uhrwerk", which is the German word for the movement used in watches.
Watch models
- 1997 Launch of their first watch named "101" (gold) and "102" (steel) at BaselBaselBasel or Basle In the national languages of Switzerland the city is also known as Bâle , Basilea and Basilea is Switzerland's third most populous city with about 166,000 inhabitants. Located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet, Basel also has suburbs in France and Germany...
with the AHCI.
- 2003 Presentation of their new watch "103" with its orbiting satellites at Basel which caught the attention of "Harry Winston Rare TimepiecesHarry WinstonHarry Winston was an American jeweler. He donated the Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian Institution in 1958 after owning it for a decade, and traded the Portuguese Diamond to the Smithsonian in 1963.-History:...
". On the "103", four orbiting and rotating satelliteSatelliteIn the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavour. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon....
s display the hours, with each satellite indicating the time in both analogueAnalog signalAn analog or analogue signal is any continuous signal for which the time varying feature of the signal is a representation of some other time varying quantity, i.e., analogous to another time varying signal. It differs from a digital signal in terms of small fluctuations in the signal which are...
and digitalDigitalA digital system is a data technology that uses discrete values. By contrast, non-digital systems use a continuous range of values to represent information...
fashion as it arcsMinute of arcA minute of arc, arcminute, or minute of angle , is a unit of angular measurement equal to one sixtieth of one degree. In turn, a second of arc or arcsecond is one sixtieth of one minute of arc....
across the minute chapter.
- 2004 Urwerk begins work on the watch model of Opus V in partnership with Harry Winston.
- 2005 Launch of the watch model "103.03".
- 2007 Launch of their newest watch model "201" at Geneva Fairs. Time on the "201" is displayed by using telescopic minute hands operating through the middle of three orbiting and revolving hour satellites. The telescopic minute hands precisely adjust their length to follow the three vectors marking the minutes: 0–14, 15–44, 45–60. Extended, they enable the 201 to display the time across a large, easy-to-read dial. Retracted, they allow for a very wearable sized case, thus providing the wearer with both capabilities.
- 2009 Urwerk unveils the UR103t (The Tarantula). The Tarantula won top prize in the category of Best Sports Watch at the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie Asia competition, held on September 25, 2009, in Singapore. Urwerk also won the Best In Design category at the same awards for the Urwerk CC1.