Heritage Watchmaker City Jürgensen Gears for June Watch Launch

PARIS — Once you’re a 253-year-old “watchmaker of kings,” you’ll be able to afford to take your time.

That’s the method for the brand new chapter starting for historic watchmaker City Jürgensen, which traces its roots again to 1773 and a household of royal watchmakers in Copenhagen.

“Our view was that there’s completely no rush to get this firm again available on the market,” mentioned Alex Rosenfield, who’s co-chief govt officer alongside multiaward-winning grasp watchmaker Kari Voutilainen. “We’d launch when the watches are the place they should be so as to be launched.”

For the co-CEOs of the watchmaker headquartered within the Swiss metropolis of Biel, residence to quite a few watchmaking services, the time is nigh.

Forward of Watches and Wonders, the model quietly launched by way of restricted appointments in Geneva its up to date id and imaginative and prescient, which features a brand and customized typeface that take cues from the marking on a historic City Jürgensen watch made for a Danish king.

Come June, it’ll reveal the primary three watches of a brand new chapter initiated in 2021 when Voutilainen, Rosenfield and a decent cadre of personal buyers banded collectively to purchase the model.

The model has been removed from idle previously 4 years. Early months after the acquisition had been spent “clearing the deck” to deliver the whole lot again in-house. Then whereas Voutilainen started prototyping and constructing the brand new watches, the group was busy servicing older fashions, many from the Nineteen Eighties.

Underpinning the brand new period is the thought of “time saved and spent superbly.”  

Voutilainen spoke at size of Danish design’s purity, practical ornament and the “clear varieties and clear surfaces” that he favors additionally in his personal work. The enjoyment and pleasure derived from these lovely objects got here up much more typically.

“[A watch] may be easy or extra difficult,” he mentioned. “However on the finish of the day, it’s [about] the texture of the watch that’s necessary, the way it seems to be and the way it feels on the wrist.”

Rosenfield takes it even additional.

“A Software for Life”

“An excessive amount of of the best way we discuss watches is to speak in regards to the watches themselves, however what issues is the time you spend and the way you spend it,” Rosenfield mentioned. “The watch is a device for a life that you just’re dwelling superbly and for the extra significant issues in your world.”

This concept is embedded within the model’s communication, which can focus much less on watches than on the world by which they exist, one rife with surreal pictures starting from the founder driving a penny-farthing manufactured from watch components to breezy pictures of timekeepers amongst pencil shavings and “Lug,” a good-looking canine who sports activities a look ahead to a collar.

It’ll even be on the coronary heart of the “Time Effectively Spent” marketing campaign photographed by Ellen von Unwerth. Will probably be a collection of portraits of attention-grabbing folks — “an unbelievable younger ceramicist and an awesome previous visible artist, a dancer, an architect,” Rosenfield teased — doing issues they love.

“In some case, [that] is what they do for work,” he continued. “However in numerous instances, it’s one thing fully totally different and we’re specializing in what time nicely spent means to them — a singer fishing or an actor on a sailboat or an architect of their backyard.”

For all of the high quality engineering and watchmaking at play within the City Jürgensen of right this moment, it’s the human component that appears to have been most finely turned right here.

With good purpose: increasingly more watch customers are eager to find out how and the place issues are made and by whom, Voutilainen mentioned.

“They need to study and to get to know the folks behind the independence of a model, they need to have these human connections,” he continued. “And fairly often, [people] should not glad simply to go to a retail store and take out the bank card and pay and exit.”

At City Jürgensen, there has at all times been a lot to say, then and now.

The Starting

The story started in 1773 when Jürgen Jürgensen opened the “Larpent & Jürgensen” atelier with a fellow watchmaker. Born three years later, his son City Bruun Jürgensen grew as much as be much more expert.

Given a state grant to review in Geneva, Paris and London beneath the likes of Abraham-Louis Bréguet, Ferdinand Berthoud and John Arnold, he finally printed “Guidelines for the Correct Measurement for Watches and Clocks,” a ebook that’s nonetheless a reference right this moment, and was elected to the Royal Danish Academy of Science — a uncommon distinction for a craftsman.

Purveyor of clocks and watches for the Danish royal household and state establishments over the a long time, the model handed to exterior arms in 1919 when City Bruun Jürgensen’s final descendant died with out youngsters.

A second golden period started within the late Nineteen Seventies beneath the possession of Swiss businessman Peter Baumberger, who introduced on esteemed English watchmaker Derek Pratt. By the late Nineties, they had been famed for exceptional pocket watches and wristwatches. That’s when the duo met Voutilainen, on the time watchmaking’s new wunderkind.

It was he who would finalize the 2005 “Pratt Oval Pocket Watch,” a complicated flying tourbillon with remontoir and detent escapement that Pratt was unable to complete because of unwell well being. In November, it bought at a Phillips public sale for greater than $4.2 million, setting a brand new document for the model.

For all that, don’t count on the model to return to its best hits.

“We should neglect the earlier fashions and make our personal in-house actions, to create a brand new id that respects what has been carried out previously, but additionally make it one thing which is trendy,” mentioned the grasp watchmaker.

Whereas particulars are saved beneath tight wraps, Rosenfield mentioned the primary reference would converse to the corporate’s legacy. An extra two, one a time-only mannequin and the opposite a perpetual calendar, shall be double-wheel pure escapement watches.

It’s the route that the model will pursue by way of subsequent releases of “handmade and soulful” items which are “classically Danish however utterly modern” for Rosenfield.

Whereas he declined to offer costs for the brand new watches, he mentioned they might be on the high finish of the market.

For now, they are going to be bought on to purchasers, with communication counting on social media and the model’s web site. Additional down the road, there may be pop-up experiences, participation in artwork gala’s and maybe showrooms in a handful of cities globally.

And don’t count on any leaks from the model within the run as much as June. That’s additionally a part of the co-CEOs’ intention of “casting a internet that’s a bit wider” than rivals, together with with feminine watch fanatics.

“We wish girls to really feel as welcome as males,” Rosenfield mentioned. “There’s a notion provided that [watches are] made for women and men are allowed to put on them. We’ll be exhibiting them on girls. We’ll be exhibiting them on folks of various ages. We hope to make it a really broad universe.”