UR-111C BLACK

Once you have seen it, getting the UR-111C Black out of your mind is impossible. It seems deliberately designed to mesmerise. At first glance, the fiery contrast of the orange markings against the dark case captures the imagination. Then, the case itself. You can almost feel its balanced and fluid lines moulding to your wrist. Like all of URWERK’s watches, it’s built to astonish, albeit on traditional mechanical watchmaking principles. And it’s true to URWERK’s purpose — to demonstrate unusual and unexpected ways of telling the time on your wrist.

There’s one certain thing about the UR-111C Black. You’ve never seen anything like it before. The grooved case in black-coated steel and titanium curves along its ample length and width. The curved sides are held by transversal screws in half pipes. And what’s that roller in the middle for? Or the lever along the side of the case? Nothing is obvious; all is intriguing. To appreciate a work of art, you must understand its creator. Martin Frei, URWERK’s designer and co-founder, is a master of intriguing design in which every detail reveals another to draw you deeper into the soul of your watch. No feature is gratuitous; lines and volumes are meticulously thought out and coordinated into a coherent and harmonious living instrument.

Creating the unknown requires much imagination with a commensurate amount of technical expertise. These are combined in the person of watchmaker Felix Baumgartner, Martin Frei’s co-founding partner. The case had to be built around the unprecedented construction of the UR-111C’s movement, which put the indications at various seemingly peculiar positions on display. Furthermore, according to URWERK's signature horological speciality, each indication is unconventional, if not original. The relatively bulky and unusually shaped movement could not be cased up ordinarily through the case's top or bottom. It had to go in through the side. The case is, therefore, made up of three parts; the first two support the flanks of the movement while the bigger central part fits closely around it. The same lateral thinking that conceived the lateral casing up of the movement is equally applied to every aspect of the little machine on your wrist. If you step far beyond the bounds of conventional watchmaking, there are no longer any conventional solutions to the problems you create. URWERK’s crew of watchmakers and technicians might be small, but they abound in creative imagination and the skills to implement the impossible. Thus, the glass plate indicates seconds alone, two different displays of the minutes on rollers, and indications at the bottom of a sculptured case measuring 46mm long and 42 wide. If the UR-111C Black is beyond belief, it’s because it’s by URWERK.