Independent watchmaking is the soul of the industry. It is where innovation and the greatest sense of artful time keeping expressions are shown each year. And for me few other brands are able to marry these two values and produce more dreamy results than Urwerk.
Urwerk is the Geneva-based brand that produces the highly technical, innovative, and cool UR-Satellite timepieces with a 3D satellite retrograde presentation of time. But Urwerk is not satisfied to seat on their laurels. They have also a research and development arm dedicated to keep pushing innovation in watchmaking forward.
The Urwerk AMC is the latest result from this division. Inspired by a 17th century innovation by Abraham-Louis Breguet, who, in his obsession to produce more accurate timepieces, invented the Pendule Sympathique, where a master clock is used to auto-regulate a pocket watch, Urwerk decided to recreate the same concept but this time with much more modern components.
In the Urwerk AMC the pendule is a super accurate full-blown atomic clock. Guaranteed to be precise to 1 second in 317 years, the base or master module, is a massive "monolith" in titanium that weights over 25 kg. The monolith is meant to be placed in a special location at your house and is pretty much an autonomous sculpture that indicates the precise time.
When you open the monolith then you can dock the base of the watch (there is also a place for the strap) and the magic will happen automatically. Like for the Breguet Sympathique, the AMC will use it's precise timekeeping to regulate the watch and even wind it.
To achieve this feat, Urwerk created a new caliber with a mechanism that can pair with the atomic clock to enable its amplitude to be adjusted within + or - one or two seconds per day. But regulation is not the only value of pairing, the watch will also be wound and it's time (hour, minutes, and seconds) will also be adjusted to the correct time as per the clock's.
The Urwerk AMC watch component also includes the classic Urwerk watch value propositions such as two stacked barrels giving four days of power reserve, the unique Urwerk Oil Change Indicator (indicating when service is needed, every four years), as well as a visual indication of the rate adjustment.
But the Urwerk AMC is not this brand's first attempt at pursuing precision in mechanical watchmaking. The EMC watch introduced a few years ago was doing the same but not with an atomic clock but rather an electronics component that the user could power with a lever. The EMC 2 is a new version of that watch with red accents on a black PVD case.
Besides showcasing their engineering prowess, Urwerk as I mentioned before, does a great job of evoking the sense of art in watchmaking. And this year, two of their novelties for me was the best representation of this second value.
First in collaboration with Revolution magazine, Urkwerk presented a version of their classic UR-105 but in bronze with hand-carved Asian samurai and dragon motifs. The result is a perfect complement to the ever popular art of adorning one's skin with tattoo arts, but this time on a watch that will develop an aging patina.
The Urwerk x Revolution UR-105 is limited in production and initial models were sold out. However, I believe the collaboration will be an ongoing one with different motifs produced in limited production and released on a periodic basis.
So even those not into the art of tattoo can eventually acquire such a watch as a proxy to the feeling of having a permanent art on ourselves, but one you can remove safely and set aside at night when you get home.
Finally, in that same spirit of artful timepieces, Urwerk presented a sand-blasted titanium version of their Only Watch 2017 "ArpalOne" collaboration with Laurent Ferrier. Extremely limited to only four examples, the watch is a tone down version of the glossy Only Watch piece unique.
The result is a more wearable watch, however still large, and giving the feeling of having a miniature flying spaceship on the wrist. This is mainly due to the elongated case that also resembles the profile of a racing car. I am just happy I was able to try it on.
Urwerk has again delivered technological artful watchmaking magic. And perhaps the magic this year was beyond what I could ever hope for. By reaching back to some of the most precious heritage of the field and marrying it with humankind's most advance technology for timekeeping, they have produced something truly special in the AMC.
And in classic Urwek way, Felix Baumgartner, Martin Frei, and team, have done so in an artful fashion that keeps our technological senses going and feeds our imagination.
One of the winners in the 2019 GPHG awards in the first week of November was a two year old upstart watch brand from Kuala Lumpur named MING Watches. The young brand won best watch in the Challenge category at the Geneva show to the delight of its founder and watch aficionados who have regularly helped sell out the brand’s 11 prior releases since its debut of the 17.01 watch.
MING watches are not limited per we but are produced in small batches of a few hundreds, which in effect make them limited. A quick perusal to their web site shows that all models, except for the two new 2019 models have sold out. Interestingly the new models are also priced much higher than the previous ones. However, before getting ahead of ourselves, how does one go about seeing or trying on a MING watch?