Reborn after the fall of the Berlin Wall, A. Lange & Söhne has once again shown its technical mastery and craftsmanship in making fine watches, mostly housed in a gold or platinum case.
The brand's summer campaign notes how the new watches, Cabaret Tourbillon Handwerkskunst, Saxonia Thin and Langematik Perpetual, shine even more in the sun as subtle details play with the light.
Since 2011, the craftsmanship has been exalted in the Handwerkskunst editions by taking the finishing techniques for cases, dials and movements to the next level.
Traditional and rare techniques were employed to elaborately craft the Cabaret Tourbillon Handwerkskunst, which is the seventh model in the artistic series.
Available in 30 pieces, the limited edition in a platinum case boasts elaborate finissage of the dial and the manually-wound movement, with the lozenge as the signature design element. Made of solid white gold, the three-part dial includes an inner area manually engraved with the pattern inspired by the six lozenge-shaped hour markers in the outer zone.
A thin line decorated with tremblage visually separates each part of the dial. This engraving technique also graces the frame of the hand eye and of the date aperture. To add extra depth to the engraving for a three-dimensional effect, the dial is coated with a semi-transparent enamel layer in various metallic shades of grey.
The lower part houses subsidiary dials for the small seconds and the power-reserve indicator.
Pink gold limited anniversary edition of Langematik Perpetual with a blue dial.
At 6 o'clock, an aperture reveals the one-minute tourbillon, suspended between two diamond endstones. On its top side, the matt-finished tourbillon bridge has a black polishing that is applied using a technique that ranks among the most difficult types of finissage.
Launched in 2008, the Cabaret Tourbillon is based on A. Lange & Söhne's only rectangular model, and the world's first mechanical wristwatch with stop seconds for the tourbillon.
Likewise, the micromechanical ingenuity is showcased in the Saxonia collection, while certain models, such as the new Saxonia Thin, are crafted as a decorated timepiece.
The slim timepiece shimmers with a solid-silver dial coated with a thin layer of blue gold flux, evoking a star-studded nocturnal sky.
The meticulous artisanal process of producing gold flux has its roots in 17th-century Venice. Molten glass is infused with copper particles that form microscopically small crystals when heated over a waning flame. The material had to be applied with extreme care to the dial, framed by a narrow bezel, in order to highlight the optical effect of the gold flux.
Available in 50 pieces, the limited edition is equipped with A. Lange & Söhne's thinnest manually wound movement, with a height of merely 2.9mm, while the 40mm pink gold case is 6.2mm high to give the model's slim silhouette.
Cabaret Tourbillon Handwerkskunst with the lozenge as the signature design element.
The name of this watch family recalls how founder Ferdinand Adolph Lange laid the cornerstone of Saxony's precision watchmaking industry when he established his workshop in Glashütte in 1845.
The company was expropriated after World War II, and the name A. Lange & Söhne nearly vanished from the watch industry.
The brand was revived in 1990 by the founder's great-grandson Walter Lange. Presented in 1994, the first collection included Lange 1, Saxonia, Arkade and Tourbillon Pour le Mérite.
The Lange I is characterised by a decentralised arrangement of the displays and an outsize date, inspired by the five-minute clock in the Semper Opera House in Dresden, the capital of Saxony.
In 2001, the German watchmaker introduced the Langematik Perpetual featuring the iconic outsize date display, a perpetual calendar, and a self-winding movement with a zero-reset function and a main corrector for simultaneously advancing all calendar displays.
The 20th anniversary of the watch is marked by two versions in a white gold or pink gold 38.5mm case with a solid silver blue dial, each as a 50-piece limited edition.
Applied Roman numerals, underlaid with an embossed groove structure, prominently stand out against the dark background; while hands for the hours, minutes, days of the week and month are luminous, as are hour markers along the minute scale.
The design assures the most intuitive legibility of the calendar displays, with subsidiary dials on the left and right showing the day of the week and the month.
The perpetual calendar takes into account the different durations of the months in a four-year cycle, including those of the leap years. Once the watch is correctly set, a manual adjustment of the date is not needed until the year 2100.
The moon-phase display at 6 o'clock, paired with the subsidiary seconds dial, is also a long-term indication; it only requires a correction of one day every 122.6 years.
