Ulysse Nardin and Urwerk have come together on a very unique watch.
Unveiled at Dubai Watch Week, the piece takes the wackiest elements of both brand's catalogues and fuses them.
With Dubai Watch Week currently taking place, you'll notice a higher than usual volume of new releases coming out of the woodworks this week. All manner of brands are unveiling new pieces at the event, with a lot of focus on interesting dial materials and innovative technologies.
The latest definitely falls into the latter camp. Part of a first of its kind collaboration between Ulysse Nardin and Urwerk, the two brands have unveiled the UR-Freak – and it's quite unlike anything you'll have ever seen before.
The piece centres around the fusion of two movements. The Ulysse Nardin Freak is responsible for rotating the movement which tells the time, while Urwerk's Hour Satellite rotates the hour markers every three hours, to continually tell the time.
To read the time, you'll need to cast your attention towards the right-hand side of the dial. That shows a minute track from 0-60, which displays the minutes in conjunction with a pointer on the relevant hour hand. With me so far?
That track takes up exactly 1/3 of the dial. Combined with the trio of hands on show, that allows each hour hand to take over at the top of the hour just as one falls off of the bottom. It's a really clever design which is actually much easier to read than you might first imagine.
All of that sits within a 44mm case crafted from sandblasted titanium. The result is a deep, gun metal grey finish which looks really classy. There's a choice of straps in the box, too, with yellow and black rubber options available to change between.
Limited to just 100 pieces worldwide – and priced at £100,340 (approx. €113,750 / US$131,500 / AU$205,000) this certainly won't be a watch you see all the time. Don't write it off unnecessarily, though – while it might look a little funky at first glance, it's actually a very cool watch with a lot of personality.
