Explore our URWERK collectionURWERK
“Bringing out yet another version of an existing mechanical complication was not our aim”, says Felix Baumgartner, master-watchmaker and co-founder of URWERK. “Our watches are unique because each has been conceived as an original work. That is what makes them valuable and rare. Above all, we want to explore beyond the traditional horizons of watchmaking.” Martin Frei, chief designer and the other co-founder of URWERK, develops the aesthetic signature for each of the models. “I come from a world of total creative freedom. I’m not cast in the watchmaking mold, so i can draw my inspiration from my entire cultural heritage.”
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“We began essentially as a core group of artists who wanted to interpret time differently. We were not businessmen. It was extremely risky because we had no idea how our watches would be accepted.”
- Felix Baumgartner & Martin Frei, Co-Creators of URWERK
Brand Heritage
A new perspective to Haute Horlogerie Founded in 1997 by Felix Baumgartner and Martin Frei, URWERK is the result of a strongly held be-lief that the history of Fine Watchmaking is a constantly changing art. Felix Baumgartner, a watchmaker like his father and grandfather, has time running through his veins. A graduate from the Schaffhausen watchmaking school, Felix learned the secret language of minute-repeaters, tourbillons and perpetual calendars at his father’s bench. Martin Frei is the artistic counterweight to his partner’s technical expertise. Accepted into the Lucerne’s college of art and design in 1987, Martin delved into every form of visual artistic expression from painting and sculpture to video, emerging as a mature artist. | The two men met by chance and discovered a common fascination with the measurement of time, spending hours analysing the gap between the watches they saw in the shops and the vision of their future creation. The wandering hour has since formed the basis for URWERK’s astonishing 103 watch and the latest models, the UR-105 TA and the UR-210. They all feature highly original design, advanced watchmaking techniques and new concepts. URWERK means “original accomplishment,” and Ur of the Chaldees, in Mesopotamia, is where the Sumeri-ans first observed the concurrence of the heavenly bodies with the seasons, and so developed the first measurements of time.