NWA Urban Jurgensen GMT One

Last month, I acquired a special watch from a brand that I only discovered recently, but has a lot of history.

I'll share a brief history and then show pics of my modern watch.

Urban Jurgensen was a decorated and highly skilled watch maker who learned from Abraham-Louis Breguet and Ferdinand Berthoud amonget other famous watch makers. Back then making marine chronometers was the thing you do to prove you are a great watch maker.

His sons continued to run the business, but they weren't as successful as the father. They did make some nice pocket watches like this "digital" one. The first Lange zeitwerk?? 🤪

Urban Jurgensen was revived by an entrepreneur, Peter Baumgartner, and a famed watchmaker, Derek Pratt. Together, they made some amazing pocket watches in the 80s and beyond.

Double barrel, skeletonized pocket watch with tourbillon.

Perpetual Calendar, minute repeater, and moon phase!

They also made several well received and collectable wrist watches

Look at the guilloché detail and those breguet hands.

Their style is 'love it or hate it' very traditional and dressy.

The most recent news is that Kari Voutilanen, another famous watch maker, has bought the company and will be their CEO. Can't wait to see what he does.

Now with that background done, here's what you came for, watch pr0n.

Urban Jurgensen GMT One

Modern size of 41mm x 12.1mm thick at bezel. Integrated bracelet sports watch made of medical grade 1.4441 stainless steel, which has higher corrosion resistance, is harder, and half the nickel content of 904L SS. 120m water resistance.

Mine is blue and GMT, but also comes in time only and white and grey colors. Overall, only 30 of each variation was made.

Sub-dial is the home time and the two pushers on the left hand side of case advance the center hour hand forward and backwards. The date can go back and forth as you cross the international date line, so it's really convenient.

Macro shot of the wave-motif hand guilloché dial to pay homage to the marine chronometers of it's heritage.

A focus on the outer ring, which his a grained texture but they do it the traditional grenage method. More detail is here if you're interested, but in short, "the actual graining layer is built up gradually using brushes with metal bristles and a secret mixture of silver powder, various salts and other ingredients. An electrochemical reaction creates the beautiful frosty finish on the dial. The difference between this finish and those achieved by more industrial processes such as micro-blasting and satin brushing are immediately apparent." It's nice to see the two different contrasting textures on the dial.

Bonus shot of the big breguet hands with a bit of lume.

Another shot of the grenage texture

Home time sub dial with a bit of snailng.

Movement shot - the rotor with the gold filled logo showing the founding date of the original company. Gold on the outer part of the rotor to add weight so the rotor spins faster. Black polished rivet (not a technical term!) And you can see lots of blue heated screws

Bright, very reflective polishing on the gears

Finely brushed bridges

Decent bevels, hand finished of course.

Congrats, you've reached the end! Thanks for reading and viewing the pics!