Guggenheim's Rosenfield revives Danish brand selling $450,000 watches
The three timepieces represent the revival of a brand that traces its roots to 1773, when Danish watchmaker Jorgen Jürgensen started creating his own pocket watches—far away from the watchmaking heartlands of Switzerland and France.
Later, his son Urban took over the helm. A master of mechanics and crafts, Urban built some of the finest pocket watches of the time. The company was handed down from generation to generation until the early 1900s, when it was sold and, in the ensuing years under several different owners, its popularity declined.
The brand enjoyed a second renaissance when Swiss watch collector Peter Baumberger purchased the company in 1979 and brought British watchmaker Derek Pratt onboard to create beautiful pocket watches, some oval in shape (including the Pratt Oval, a rare masterpiece you can read about here) and others with teardrop-shaped lugs.
In 1996, Baumberger hired cult Finnish watchmaker Kari Voutilainen to work on new movements for wristwatches. Those round wristwatches featured design aesthetics such as teardrop lugs, stepped bezels and small subsidiary seconds dials, embracing a Danish minimalistic, comfortable and functional design style. Voutilainen says he honed his unique finishing skills, the distinctive techniques that define his work, while at the company.
Today, he's one of the most celebrated and award-winning independent watchmakers, known for his mastery of the art of engine turning dials by hand on vintage machines, for his incredibly complex finishes on movement parts and his complicated horological movements. While he was passionate about propelling the brand forward, Baumberger died in 2011, which ushered in a new set of owners and diminished demand.
Then, four years ago, in 2021, watch collector Andy Rosenfield purchased the Urban Jürgensen brand (with a small group of investors), with the goal to propel it into a third golden age. Already an owner of several Voutilainen watches, Rosenfield brought Voutilainen onboard, along with his own son Alex, to act as co-chief executive officers. While the Rosenfields own 85% of the business, Voutilainen (and some family and friends) own the remaining 15%.
Together the co-CEOs vowed to return Urban Jürgensen to its former glory but with a modern twist. 'Our goal is to take our Danish spirit and to create a brand that feels joyful and welcoming. The watches were designed by Kari to be appealing to both men and women,' says the elder Rosenfield.
'He designed a new case and lug shape for the watches that make them sit very comfortably on a smaller wrist.' The round cases are 39mm and 39.5mm in diameter and boast either shortened lugs or reinterpreted teardrop-designed lugs to fit nicely on the wrist.
The new Urban Jürgensen watches are made in Switzerland. They're powered by in-house movements designed by Voutilainen and made in the Urban Jürgensen workshops in Biel. Two of the three watches are based on a preexisting Voutilainen caliber that's been adapted. It features a free-spring balance wheel with direct double-wheel escapement. Each is crafted in limited numbers.
The UJ-1 watch, for instance, is built in a limited edition of just 75 pieces. Also referred to as the 250th Anniversary watch, it boasts a 39.5mm case and houses a complex gold movement with tourbillon remontoir escapement, which compensates for errors in timekeeping due to the effects of gravity and brings constant force for precision.
The watch was inspired by the Pratt Oval, with details such as hand-guilloche finishes, an asymmetric minute track and a gold subsidiary dial. Retailing for 368,000 Swiss francs ($450,000), it's crafted in either rose gold or in platinum and features a hand-finished dial in silver or gray. Three combinations will be offered in runs of 25 of each.
The plan is to create just 75 each of the other two watches as well. The UJ-2 watch (105,000 francs) is an elegant time-only watch. Created in cooperation with another top independent watchmaker, Andreas Strehler, the UJ-3 is a perpetual calendar with an instantaneous jump mechanism at midnight that keeps the moonphase accurate to within one day every 14,000 years. It retails for 168,000 francs.
The brand expects to make fewer than 100 watches in its first year, then double that in the next. Unlike Voutilainen's namesake brand, which makes about 60 watches a year, Rosenfield says Urban Jürgensen will aim to steadily grow over the course of years, focusing on developing new complications.
Currently, the watches are only available directly to consumers online.
'This collection is a tribute to Urban Jürgensen and his unique and extraordinary legacy. It's rooted in everything that defines who we are: precision, artistry, and a profound respect for the value of time,' says Voutilainen.
'We want to keep the brand rare, and while we want to grow it, we can't grow too fast. We want to keep building the most sophisticated movements and create watches with a soul.'
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