This UR-100 Iron features offers a contemporary take on the wandering hours complication, with a skeletonised view of the mechanics and a futuristic design inspired by science fiction and space exploration. The concept was briefly translated to pocket watches but was supplanted by the two-hand method of displaying time. It is either an improbable coincidence or an early source of inspiration that Baumgartner’s father was once involved in its restoration, at a time when his son would have been around the workshop. The insomniac pope requested the ability to read time in the dark, so an oil lamp was placed inside the clock case, illuminating the dial and allowing him to read the time through the open-worked numerals.

It is believed that the wandering hours complication was first used on a night clock designed for Pope Alexander XII in 1656 by the Campani brothers, a well-known family of clockmakers in Rome. It was extremely risky because we had no idea how our watches would be accepted.” The wandering hours complication As Felix Baumgartner himself recalls, 'we were not businessmen. With their atypical time display, use of modern materials and futurist design, the first Urwerk watches certainly surprised the rather conservative watch world. In the same year, they launched the UR-101 and UR-102 watches at Baselworld, the first steps in their mission to push forward innovative ways of displaying time. The other half of Urwerk, Martin Frei has a background in graphic and industrial design, complementing Felix’s watchmaking abilities.įollowing their meeting, the pair established Urwerk in 1997.

He would later attend the prestigious watchmaking school in Solothurn and create complicated watches for independent Sven Andersen. From their meeting, Urwerk was born, a combination of the words Ur – the city where time was first measured over 6,000 years ago using sun-lit obelisks and Werk – which means 'to create' in German.įelix Baumgartner first learnt about watchmaking in his father’s atelier, who restored historically significant clocks, including the Campani brothers’ night clock from 1656, believed to feature the first ever wandering hours complication. In 1995, Felix Baumgartner, a promising young watchmaker, and Martin Frei, an industrial designer, first met in order to discuss the idea of creating a new way to perceive time.

Iron wandering willows