After completing his education at Konstfack in 1951, Rey Urban traveled the world for new inspiration, he also worked as a silversmith in Denmark for a period. Rey Urban was one of the participants in the important exhibition "Nutidssmycken" at the National Museum in 1959, an exhibition that presented most of the 1950s innovators of Swedish jewelry art. In the 1960s, together with Lars Fleming and Claës Giertta, he formed the group "Tre smeder" which exerted a great influence on the contemporary jewelry scene. Interest in Rey Urban's matter-of-fact and sometimes almost brutalist aesthetics is constantly growing, not least abroad where Swedish jewelry from the 1950s and 60s is held in high esteem.