Our Take

Stepping well outside their comfort zone, that’s not very unusual for Urwerk. The brand’s UR-Chronometry and UR-Special Projects collections have some timekeeping devices that push the boundaries of modern watchmaking, as is especially the case with the EMC and AMC timepieces. The creative and dynamic duo of Martin Frei and Felix Baumgartner, co-founders of Urwerk, have returned with another, radically original and unusual creation. For Watches & Wonders 2024, this is the all-new SpaceTime Blade.

Standing roughly 5’7” tall and weighing circa 45 lbs, the SpaceTime Blade has been designed to further Urwerk’s pursuit of representing time within the broader context of the cosmos. This is an evolutionary upgrade to the distance of Earth’s rotation in kilometers shown on UR-100.

Its base is an Urwerk bronze crown, an imposing and oversized structure topped by a glass dome, blown by the world’s finest glass workers in “Crystal Valley” in the Czech Republic. Beneath the glass dome, there are eight vertically aligned Nixie bulbs, each individually custom-shaped using a blowtorch. Each glass tube is meticulously filled with low-pressure neon gas and features a wire-mesh anode, with cathodes forming the numerals. A separate cathode is precision-made for each unit from 0 to 9. Dalibor Farny, one of the world’s foremost experts at Nixie tube lamps, has his fingerprints all over the technical elements of the creation.

These thin, fragile bulbs display both the time (hours, minutes, seconds) as well as a distance in kilometers of the Earth's rotation. Powered by remote control, the display of this extraordinary timepiece evokes the power of a lightsaber and can be set to eight different positions:

Position 1: Indication of the hours, minutes and seconds.

Position 2: Indication of the hours, minutes, seconds, 1/10ths and 1/100ths of a second.

Position 3: Indication of the day, month and year.

Position 4: Indication of the Earth's daily rotation expressed in km (measured at the equator, counted over a period of one day).

Position 5: Indication of the Earth's revolution around the Sun expressed in km (counted over a one-day period)

Position 6: Indication of the earth's revolution around the Sun expressed in km (counted over a one-year period)

Position 7: Shuffle mode

Position 8: Pause mode

This is a step in a new direction for Urwerk – no satellite complication, no wandering hours, no planetary gears, no case, and no dial. Limited to 33 pieces, the SpaceTime Blade is another extremely creative contribution to modern independent watchmaking by one of our favorite brands.

The Details

Height: 170cm

Weight: 20kg

For a total of 1’445 components

• 8 Nixies glass bulbs (88 components per Nixie unit) featuring: Time indications (hour; minutes; seconds; 1/10 and 1/100 of a seconds)
• Distance indications (Earth’s rotation and revolution expressed in km)
• Electronic spinal column
• Bronze base with black patina (lost wax casting)