Urban Jürgensen’s return in 2025 was never going to be judged by a logo alone.
Under the co-direction of Kari Voutilainen and Alex Rosenfield, the historic name came back with a three-watch collection, but the UJ-1 Tourbillon 250th Anniversary Watch is the piece that carries the greatest mechanical weight.
It’s a wristwatch with deep pocket-watch memory, built around ideas connected to Derek Pratt’s celebrated Oval pocket watch rather than a straightforward act of miniaturisation.
At a glance
- Urban Jürgensen’s UJ-1 Tourbillon 250th Anniversary Watch is the flagship complication of the brand’s 2025 return.
- Its 30mm calibre adapts key architectural ideas from Derek Pratt’s Oval pocket watch, including a flying barrel, curved central bridge and tourbillon with remontoir d’égalité.
- The watch sits alongside the UJ-2 and UJ-3 in the revived collection, with price and wider availability details not publicly specified in the confirmed details.
A wristwatch shaped by the Oval
The UJ-1 isn’t a miniature Oval pocket watch with lugs attached.
There’s no oval case, no moon phase and no thermometer, which is precisely why the watch is more interesting than a direct tribute.
Voutilainen’s work here is architectural rather than cosmetic, translating the governing ideas of Pratt’s movement into a new 30mm wristwatch calibre built from the ground up.
That mattered because Pratt’s Oval was a key-wound and key-set pocket watch, with its winding and setting systems arranged on the back of the movement.
A wristwatch needs a crown and keyless works, and placing those elements on the visible movement side would have spoiled the composition that made the Oval so distinctive.
In the UJ-1, the winding and hand-setting mechanism has been moved to the dial side, keeping the back of the movement clean and faithful in spirit to Pratt’s layout.
The view through the back is deliberately spare, organised around a raised flying barrel, a large curved central bridge and a one-minute flying tourbillon.
It’s a rare kind of complexity, where the first impression is not density but space.
The remontoir inside the tourbillon
The mechanical centre of the UJ-1 is its one-minute flying tourbillon with an integrated remontoir d’égalité.
A mainspring delivers changing torque as it unwinds, and a remontoir acts as a secondary energy store, releasing a more consistent impulse to the escapement.
In this watch, that energy cycle happens once every second inside the tourbillon carriage.
The system uses a Reuleaux triangle, a curve of constant width, interacting with a two-pronged lever fitted with ruby contact surfaces.
That tiny steel component controls the charging and release of the remontoir spring, turning an abstract precision device into something visible and rhythmic.
The small seconds display advances in dead-beat jumps, with each one-second motion also showing the remontoir at work.
The tourbillon cage itself has an asymmetrical three-arm form, but this isn’t decoration masquerading as engineering.
Because the remontoir adds uneven mass inside the carriage, the cage geometry helps balance the assembly, making its shape a direct result of the mechanism it carries.
The escapement is a Swiss lever paired with a balance fitted with micrometric timing screws and a hairspring with a Phillips terminal curve.
That choice is pragmatic, giving the UJ-1 a regulating system better suited to a wristwatch than the spring-detent solution used in Pratt’s pocket-watch masterpiece.
Chronometer thinking on the dial side
The UJ-1’s power reserve is another reminder that this watch is interested in historical precision mechanisms, not only visual drama.
Instead of a simpler modern display, Urban Jürgensen uses a cone-and-feeler system associated with marine chronometry.
As the mainspring winds and unwinds, a threaded cone rises or falls, while a feeler with a ruby roller tracks the cone’s changing height and translates that motion to the power reserve indication.
It’s an elaborate way to communicate a 47-hour reserve, but efficiency isn’t the point.
The same can be said of the Geneva stop-work fitted to the flying barrel, which sits raised above the movement and gives the calibre much of its sculptural depth.
The movement runs at 18,000 vibrations per hour, a traditional frequency that suits the watch’s historical character and the demands of its regulating architecture.
Finishing as construction, not decoration
At this level, polished bevels and black-polished screws are expected, but the UJ-1 is more specific than a checklist of haute horlogerie signals.
The broad movement surfaces are frosted with a fine metal brush to create a grenage texture, giving the architecture a quiet, almost mineral quality.
The curved central bridge, known as a bercé bridge, has rounded and fully polished bevels that soften its scale without reducing its presence.
Other bridge surfaces are finished with hand-drawn straight graining using Cabron abrasive, while the wheels are satin-polished with chamfered spokes.
Even individual screws receive unusually intensive treatment, including a polished head, a traditional English slot and a chamfered perimeter.
None of this adds power reserve or changes the stated frequency, but it defines the UJ-1 as a complete horological object rather than a movement designed only to solve timing problems.
Details & Specifications
| Brand | Urban Jürgensen |
|---|---|
| Model | UJ-1 Tourbillon 250th Anniversary Watch |
| Collection context | Part of the brand’s 2025 return alongside the UJ-2 and UJ-3 |
| Movement size | 30mm |
| Complication | One-minute flying tourbillon with integrated remontoir d’égalité |
| Remontoir action | Once per second |
| Seconds display | Dead-beat seconds linked to the remontoir cycle |
| Escapement | Swiss lever escapement |
| Balance | Balance with micrometric timing screws |
| Hairspring | Phillips terminal curve |
| Frequency | 18,000 vibrations per hour |
| Power reserve | 47 hours |
| Barrel | Flying barrel with Geneva stop-work |
| Power reserve indication | Cone-and-feeler mechanism with ruby roller |
| Finishing | Grenage surfaces, polished rounded bevels, hand-drawn straight graining, satin-polished wheels and chamfered spokes |
The UJ-1 is the kind of watch that will speak most clearly to collectors who care about lineage, mechanics and the difficult art of restraint.
It doesn’t merely celebrate Urban Jürgensen’s past; it shows how a historic idea can be rebuilt for the wrist without losing the tension, intelligence and handcraft that made it worth preserving in the first place.
