horology isn’t a space that’s short on maverick watchmakers pandering to the nonconformist. What separates Urban Jürgensen? “We are a product company, not a marketing company,” says Petersen, gesturing, perhaps, towards certain avant-garde independents who invest heavily in sport sponsorship and celebratory ambassadors. “There’s so much unconstrained product marketing these days, where you get these very forced stories: ‘We are working with this Formula 1 Racing Team, and we’ve taken a piece of titanium to produce this ultimate titanium Formula 1 watch’. It’s forced. People know that.” You could buy an entire mechanical watch for less than it costs to make some of Urban Jürgensen’s dials. The brand is also nearly unique in manufacturing its own hands – a process which is so laborious, that any business that’s motivated purely by bottom line simply wouldn’t bother with. “Most moon discs in the industry are gilded discs, or gold discs, with a templateprinted blue sky and stars. We take a steel disc, drill out the holes for the moons, stamp the indentations for the stars, then melt gold into the star holes and press fit solid gold moons. Then the whole disc is thermally blued. After around 28 operations, you have an Urban Jürgensen moon disc.” While Urban Jürgensen has been making watches almost continuously since 1773, sandwiching the age of the brand between such esteemed watchmakers as Vacheron Constantin (1755) and GirardPerregaux (1791), Petersen only stumbled across the brand in 1993. He had entered a jewellers in Copenhagen with the view of purchasing a Patek Philippe – he left with an Urban Jürgensen. Twenty-one years later, when the opportunity arose, he purchased the watch company outright. How, then, does Petersen hope to future-proof Urban Jürgensen for another two-and-a-half centuries? He uses Picasso to explain: “He never used a spray can, even though the spray can was invented half way through his career. He was at the top of his game, he could have done whatever he wanted, but he never picked up a spray can. Urban Jürgensen shares this devotion. We are inspired by the old crafts, the original. We are dedicated to the honest way of doing things.” urbanjurgensen.com
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THE CITY MAGAZINE | January 2017
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