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Revolution Awards 2017: Founder’s Choice Award — URWERK UR-T8 and UR-105 CT Streamliner
In the end, I decided to bring the watches that made the most emotional significance to me in my growth as a watch collector and journalist. And with that as the criterion, I knew I had to bring an Urwerk.
From the UR-103.03 worn on Baumgartner’s wrist at the presentation of the Harry Winston Opus V in 2005, to the engraved UR-210, which was the timepiece I had selected to show Clymer, to the two extraordinary evolutions of Baumgartner and Frei’s unique vision — the UR-T8 and the UR-105 CT Streamliner released this year — each ensuing Urwerk watch has continued to be a perfect expression of their alternate watchmaking universe that, as Marcel Proust would say, is “seen only by them and not visible to others”.
The UR-T8 does this with a case that can be unlocked from a carrier, then swivelled in a figure 8, hence the name “T” for Transformer and “8” for the unique kinetic pathway it traces whilst in liminal state, allowing you to wear the watch back to front for ultimate protection of the crystal.
Says Frei: “With Urwerk, we are in some ways happily oblivious to what is happening in the rest of the watch world. We continue on our path.” This year, both of Urwerk’s latest watches, and the men behind them, receive my Founder’s Choice Award for two full decades of blazing their own inexorable path to greatness.