A Curiosity Sparked Dynasty
Born by the royal court of Copenhagen, Jorgen Jorgensen, in 1745, used his standing as a servant into a permit for accurately made product. The fabulous clocks of France and Germany were the object of desire of European elites; Denmark had no native forerunner; and to fill that gap, the teenage Jorgen took apprenticeship with the Lincke brothers, subsequently started the six-year wander-journey that all talented guild students had to dread and anticipate. By 1772 he had assimilated the German metallurgy, changed his family name to Jurgensen and developed a friendship which lasted through his life with the Swiss progenitor Jacques-Frderic Houriet–a liaison that planted the first industrial aspirations of watch production in Denmark. The radicalness of that apprenticeship is often forgotten today by collector-cum-trade historians; in the 1760s few northern Europeans (of whatever religion or political leaning) crossed language, religion and tariff barriers to learn Swiss tooling, in an era when travelling meant 3 weeks by post-chaise and armed guard. That international spirit can be considered as the brand DNA of Urban Jurgensen.
Establishment of the First Watch Workshop of the North
Going back home Jorning provoked master Isaak Larpent to become a partner with him to launch a factory to compete with Geneva imports. This was in a guild petition they delivered in 1773 suggesting
- • the specialisation of lathe design
- • more rigorous temperature compensation testing
- • an equal quota of apprentices–ideas that would be seen in the 20 th century as elements of the lean production movement, decades before they happened.
Larpent & Jurgensen obtained Denmark-s first watchmaking licence after eight years of bureaucratic wrangling, and was producing about 4 000 repeaters and regulators by 1814. Those numbers would be considered modest these days, though, given that they amounted to 70 % of the precision-time market of the kingdom (unpublished archive note, 2024, copied in shipping log held at Copenhagen, Royal Arsenal Museum). The social transformation of Jorgan was completed by marriage to merchant heiress Anne Leth Bruun, by which relations the special appliances were funded, among them a German iron jig borer: a German iron jig borer could still be seen in the Danish Technical Museum.
International Apprenticeship and Local innovations
His eldest son Urban, of whom he gave birth Christmas week 1776, succeeded his paternity with the refinements of the most developed ateliers in Europe. Between 1797 and 1801 he was sponsored by a Danish state bursary to rotate through the workshops in Le Locle, Paris and London, of Houriet, Breguet, Berthoud and John Arnold. Later those names appeared on the deck chronometers on British frigates and Napoleonic survey vessels; Urban did not only study mechanics, but politics of maritime standard time as well. Upon his return he brought in machines to cut fusees and published Rules to the Correct Calculation of Time Copenhagen first scientific treatise on watch making and which is still used in the Scandi-German restoration courses. I can hear virtually the pine-tarred docks of Nyhavn where Urban tested his novel marine chronometers against astronomical noon, a ceremony whose record is preserved in logbooks which can now be searched online by the National Library of Denmark.
An Export Boom Danish founders provoked Overview of the Data
| Year | Swiss Watch FOB Export Price (CHF bn) | Year on Year Growth |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 17.0 | -21 % |
| 2021 | 22.3 | +31 % |
| In 2022, it will be 24.9, which is an increase of 12 % compared to last year. | ||
| 2023 | 25.5 | 2 % |
| 2024 | 24.8 | -2.8 % |
SOURCE Swiss Federation of the Watch Industry (FHS), by 2025
Precision, Awards and Winter Polar Climatic advantage
Bimetallic pocket thermometers designed by Urban received a 1805 gold medal of the Royal Danish Agricultural Society, awarded as an improvement of temperature drift which was an eternal pain to Baltic sailors. That award was important: military contracts often specified demonstrated toughness in -10 o C Norwegian winters, which the Swiss firms in the inland sea could seldom fulfill. In 1811 Urban established his own Copenhagen based maison, entrusting the eldest branch of the business to brother Frederik, whose half-a-millennium and 500 royal-court works in 32 years mind-alteringly re-categorised the limited edition. Urban more focussed on serialised marine chronometers and shipped 45 on deck models until his death in 1830. Two are saved in the Dannebrog; the Danish state yacht.
Third-Generation Growth and the Swiss Flanking
The sons of Urban, Louis Urban and Jules Frederik, broke apart: the former managing Copenhagen, the latter inserting himself into Switzerland to access calibre innovation. This Scandinavian identity/Swiss mechanisms was the precursor of similar tricks employed by Giral Genta and MB&F. During the 1850s, the brothers kept the top-5 Observatory ranking in the rate stability class protection the firm when steam navigation had the precise chronometer requirements that were increasingly tight. Nonetheless the family succession was weak: Jules son, Jacques Alfred Jurgensen, was without heir and died in 1912; his caretaker David Golay sold out in 1914 during recession caused by wartime. That was where the seed was sown of a century of brand peregrination.
Slumps, Storms and Serial Ownership
The after WWI sale to New York dealer Henry Freund and Heuer appeared successful. The chronographs made by Heuer under the Urban label in 1919-1930 followed the fashions of the roaring twenties with thin, Art-Deco styled cases, renamed by collectors as Quiet Icons. However the 1929 crash evaporated capital and in 1932 it closed. Poor credibility was further undermined when Urban Jurgensen changed at least five senior American owners in the period 1936-1974 (even assembling some watches in St Croix to take tax advantages). It makes one think of the current buzz-brand flip culture, but they did not last long enough to yield a saviour who saved trademark rights.
The Polarisation of Markets Demonstrates the Importance of Niche Heritage Brands
| Segment (Retail Price) | Four-year Export Value Share | Four-year Growth Share |
|---|---|---|
| 50 000CHF 33.5 % | 84 % | ||
| 50 000 CHF and less | 66.5 % | 16 % | ||
SOURCE LuxeConsult and Morgan Stanley, 2025
Enter Baumberger and Pratt- the Resurrection Two-some
It was the store window of a dusty Copenhagen shopfront, where, in 1976, Swiss son of a dial-maker Peter Baumberger saw the window displaying a Copenhagen store under the name Urban, in honor of its 200 th birthday. He bargained three years, sold his collection of vintage articles to buy the deal and most importantly, he called English mastermind sculptor Derek Pratt to make the comeback. They combined El Primero torque and hand-guilloche dial with teardrop lugs in their 1982 Reference 1 chronograph/calendar (which was also an early instance of a verneir toteuse display). There were eleven wristwatch mentions next and finally the Oval Pocket watch, the 23-year detent-tourbillon ode of Pratt. Its 2024 Phillips lot was worth more than CHF 7 million, which is evidence that resurrected heritage can be more luminous than brand-new hype items.
Overall and in general, why does 2020s collectors care about that Oval?
- • Marine-grade detent escapement, in combination with flying tourbillon- the engineering still uncommon in serial wristwatches
- • Displays constant-force remontoire within tourbillon cage, a solution that the 2023 Audemars Piguet RD#4 repeats
- • Oval crystal and guilloch dial are hand made and predict the bespoke-component trend running through the current crop of independents
Private Equity to Family Stewardship
Following the death of Baumberger in 2010, auction expert Dr Helmut Crott has brought together marques Jules and Urban, but realised that it lacked capital. In the Danish, a consortium modernised production, even a line of sports with an integrated bracelet was tested to attract millennials. In 2021 American collector family investors purchased a stake, making Kari Voutilainen and longtime fashion-media executive Alex Rosenfield co-CEOs. The story of founding itself finds an echo in the fact that the current head of Biel manufacturing is Voutilainen daughter Venla.
Independent Renaissance and the Outlook 2025
Deloitte Swiss Watch Study 2023 ruled that 62\% of executives think that the value that independents will exceed by the year 2028 will be conglomerates, attributed to storytelling and artisanal finishing (Deloitte, 2023). The forthcoming 2025 collection with its use of in-house P8 detent calibres and Voutilainen-tuned versions of the lever will place the brand into the core area of interest among collectors who want more heritage but also something a little new and different. After a play around with an early model of this prototype this spring, I was astonished with the sheer coldness of its grenage dial that proves that Voutilainen is not ruining but rather continues the lesser-known legacy of Pratt.
Author Bio
Samuel Hartmann is a horological historian in Zurich, and former curator at the Museum of Time. He is a specialist in Northern European precision-time instruments and consultant to collectors in the purchase of independent-watches.
