The Jürgensen Legacy
The eponymous brand was founded in 1773 in Copenhagen by Urban Jürgensen himself, a precocious watchmaker who was previously an apprentice to Abraham-Louis Breguet, Ferdinand Berthoud, and John Arnold. The Jürgensen manufacture was started by Urban Jürgensen, along with his father Jürgen Jürgensen, and has long been credited with introducing the watch industry to Denmark. Shortly after the birth of his son in 1776, Jürgen Jürgensen moved to Le Locle in Switzerland to work with Jacques-Frédéric Houriet, laying the foundations for a Danish-Swiss connection which still exists over 240 years later.
The modern Jürgensen brand was acquired by Peter Baumberger in 1979, with master watchmaker Derek Pratt at the helm. The pair then set about carrying forward a legacy of elegant and complicated timepieces, whilst pioneering concepts of performance, stability and movement aesthetics. Despite being amongst the most accomplished independant watchmakers of the last century, Pratt remains largely unrecognised within the field.
He was a long-standing friend of George Daniels, and it is believed that the pair used to have lengthy telephone discussions every Sunday morning, sharing ideas back and forth between themselves, whilst also working closely together on more than one occasion. The Reference 3 epitomises this period of Urban Jürgensen’s history in the best way, bringing together an impressive perpetual calendar movement, based on a highly-refined Frédéric Piguet calibre, with balanced aesthetics and a hand-finished dial. The perpetual calendar module is said to have been of the watchmaker's own creation, whilst many of the dials throughout this period were engine turned by Pratt himself.
A Balanced Design
The Urban Jürgensen Perpetual Calendar Reference 3 is cased in platinum, using the brand’s distinctive teardrop lugs and convex bezel. Forged separately from the case, the teardrop lugs are carefully heat-treated, hand-polished and individually soldered into place using mid-century horological methods, with no visible soldering line.
The hand-finished, engine-turned guilloché dial requires up to 700 operations and two full days of hand craftsmanship to complete. Manufactured from one piece of solid silver, the varying guilloché patterns create a varied texture, which creates a beautiful interplay with the light. A cartouche below the moonphase sub-dial twelve o'clock references “Urban Jürgensen Copenhagen”, with the piece’s unique number placed within the moonphase. The day and date apertures are placed close to the 9 and 3 o’clock index markers respectively.
The deep blue background of the moonphase set with a yellow moon and stars provides a wonderful contrast with the monochromatic dial and naturally draws the eye towards it. The polished date chapter is set diametrically below the moonphase, while the dates themselves centre around a slender gold indicator, with an elegant counter-balance at one end; a subtle mirroring of the crescent shaped moonphase aperture.
The index markers are printed in black on an ivory-coloured chapter ring surrounding the centre of the dial, and there is a dotted minute track running along the outermost section. The handmade, solid gold Observatoire-style hands are turned on a precision lathe, and mirror-polished, with the arms of the hands carefully riveted in place, creating a unique effect reminiscent of early 18th and 19th-century marine chronometers made by Urban Jürgensen.
The Movement
The Urban Jürgensen Perpetual Calendar Reference 3 uses a high-quality Frederic Piguet 71 ébauche, an ultra-slim, self-winding calibre that has an open barrel. The movement is fitted with 18 jewels, oscillates at 18,000 vph, and has a 21k gold rotor.
If sold within the United Kingdom, this Urban Jürgensen Perpetual Calendar Ref. 3 will be subject to 20% VAT.
