Baselworld Day 3-Urban Jurgensen & Son and Heritage Watch Manufactory

Most improved might go to Urban Jurgensen, the late Peter Baumberger's baby for the past decades, which has now a new owner, Dr. Helmut Crott and now the watchmaking power house of Kari Voutilainen & Jean Francois Mojon. Previously the great Derek Pratt, masterminded the development of the new Caliber 8, with it's detent escapement, it is now being developed for series production in their new watches and should be available soon for collectors.

Here are some images of the new pieces:

I love this chocolate guilloche dial in the red gold case!

Here we have a steel version:

The UJS Cal 8:

I have followed with much interest the exploits of a watchmaker from Germany, Karsten Fraessdorf, whom I first came across with Marc Brogsitter back a mere 2 years ago in Basel. Mr. Brogsitter is an avid collector and attorney in Switzerland, who contracted Mr. Fraessdorf to design and build his movements. The watches I saw were prototypes in superb vintage "Patek/Vacheron" looking rectangular cases with 1930's dial designs. From there he was involved in FDMN, a brand building watches in Brionne, France, who also was involved in a much anticipated Chronoswiss collaboration, designated as the Sauterelle.

Moving on the the present, Mr. Fraessdorf is now the technical man behind the concept & design of the chronometer calibers of the Heritage Watch Manufactory, a privately held company based in Neuchâtel. Here he continues on his quest for technically superior, classically designed manual wind calibers, that have superb chronometric performance for the connoisseur. His first three calibers are found in watches designed by a name familiar in watch circles, Eric Giroud. The Magnus and the Tensus are simple, yet classic wristwatches, that convey a feeling of tremendous quality together with a precision engineered in house caliber. Those that admire and value precision and very high chronometric performance will find these compelling. The third watch is a version of the Magnus, the Centenus, with an additional Chinese time measuring capacity. The day is subdivided into 100 units, this watch shows this.

Here is the Tensus, Cal 880:

And a close up:

And the Magnus:

This is the Cal 888, which is found in the Centenus.

In finishing, I was most interested to meet Karsten, and find out about these superb watches with his precision engineered calibers. He took his time to explain to me many of the technical aspects, patented, of his designs, from the "Vivax" balance wheel to the Constant Force escape and even the power reserve, that uses a differential to measure the power reserve without using up any power from the mainspring.

For those of you who are technically minded and find the movement designs interesting and fascinating will certainly enjoy his improvements to basic aspects of a mechanical caliber in order to improve accuracy.

Baselworld Day 2-the short version...pictures mostly

Back at it for day 2. Having seen yesterday, some stunning small Independent creations, I thought I was mostly done, and it would be some of the bigger Independents pieces that wow me. Well they did, Messrs Claret and the guys behind MDT, however I was not ready for the amazing work done by one of the truly great guys in the watchworld, Martin Braun.

Martin's story is a somewhat common one in watchmaking circles, long but suffice to say, his latest creation in fantastic.

this caliber is amazing, note te massive balance wheel:

a new truly handmade curved watch, by Eva Leube

OK, now I can finish Day 2. Here is the extraordinary mystery automatic Tourbillon movement from Thomas Prescher...

And the latest iteration of the Maitres Du Temps chapter 2, a WG piece with a lovely blue dial.

On the wrist...

I have to say the weather has been great so far.

The fascinating Ressence, not haute horology by any standards, but a wonderful way of telling time with interconnected discs. The designer is a great guy and has a compelling concept.

Now to Haute Horology, the much anticipated inhouse caliber from Kari Voutilainen, the Vingt-8.

And Christophe Claret's latest tongue in cheek mechanical "Black Jack", it shuffles & deals cards to you and a dealer, with amazing results, and the mechanism, while having nothing to do with traditional watchmaking, is a stroke of genius. This version has a darkened sapphire crystal dial, so that one can see the card wheels underneath.

And the back side, showing the roulette wheel rotor.

More to come later.....

Baselworld Day 1-the short version...pictures mostly

Well, this is coming to you live from my room in beautiful Luzern at 5.22am, having just spent the last hour and a half culling through the 250 odd images I snapped yesterday in the show.

Meeting up with many dear friends, I have to say I was most excited to see John & Stephen's "Tuscar" and Bart & Tim's "One Hertz", they did not disappoint, however Marco's new piece, the "Friedrich II", his first ever steel watch, and a couple of others where a welcome respite from the standard big brand products. Made with the blood sweat and tears of years of experience, often gained under the thumb of some not so pleasant big company, while managing to keep their passion going and sanity intact. now is their time to show off their wares, and I'm thrilled to be part of it and to be able to share with you my thoughts and "down & dirty" pictures, shot with a relatively pedestrian camera, compared to most of the "journalists" cruising the halls.

So to the pictures, rather than my words, there will be more writing to come, so for now please enjoy.

The faithful, pouring out of the many trains arriving at the main railway station in Basel from all over Switzerland at 8am.

So to the watches, first up is the Tuscar:

the backside:

Now the One Hertz in either steel or a new version I wasn't expecting, in red gold with a chocolate dial, stunning!

Steel back:

Now to the red gold stunner, I especially like the movement's amazing steel bridges contrasting against the gold case:

And it's lovely dial side:

Now to Dresden's genius, Marco Lang:

And here is his new Caliber VI, a derivative of the superb Caliber V that sports the remontoir and central jumping seconds.

Romain Gauthier surprised me with a new version of his HMS, this time in Titanium at 43mm:

Superlative finishing:

And debutted last year, but I still love this more dressy, classic version, the white gold HMS:

And my Finninsh friend, Stepan Sarpaneva's superb art:

Here is the DLC K3 Northern Stars with red gold moons:

The iconic Korona Moonshine, this one with a YG Moon and brilliant luminous moonphase indicator at the bottom of the dial:

And the piece I was very excited to see last year, here again the sport watch, which will be in steel in actual production, this working proto is Ti.

Peter Speake-marin and I go back the longest of all, 8 years, and he showed me a unique piece that i could not picture, but was for me, possibly the most stunning mechanical watch I have ever seen to date. Details of which I cannot reveal in this forum, but which one lucky collector will treasure. It is red gold, that's all I can tell you. Peter showed me several future projects which will be developed in the next months and years, suffice to say, they will appeal to a variety of collectors and I think will define Peter even more as one of the most innovative and brilliant Independent Master Watchmakers creating today. I don't love all his work aesthetically, however I appreciate what he does and why.

This is a one off QP in red gold, there will also be one in white gold, that's it.

OK, that's it for now, I have to re-do yesterday again in a few hours, seeing other people & pieces, so must get showered and shaved!

Thanks for reading and looking,

Cheers,

Tim