AN ELEGANT ODE TO PRECISION
The watchmakers from Glashütte include precious adornments on the perfectly readable day, date and month display which requires no adjustment until the end of this century.
Over the last 20 years, A. Lange & Söhne has proposed eight watches boasting a perpetual calendar. Many of them combine it with a tourbillon or a chronograph. This year, the Saxony-based manufacture is focusing exclusively on the eponymous complication of the Lange 1 Perpetual Calendar. The hours and minutes feature in an offset disc at 3 o’clock. A large date reigns supreme at 10 o’clock. The days are ticked over by a retrograde hand at 9 o’clock, the months displayed in a ring around the dial by a triangular-shaped marker at 6 o’clock. An aperture, positioned just above, informs the wearer if the year is a leap one or not. The Moon phases are unveiled in a dedicated space which also hosts a day/night indicator.
The L021.3 caliber, assembled using 621 components breathes life into all the time data for 50 hours once the watch is fully wound. This automatic movement is equipped with correction pushers which can be used to set the whole calendar or just to update one piece of data. Once synchronized, the mechanism ensures error-free displays of the changing months until 2100. Lunar cycles only need one 24-hour correction at the end of 122.6 years.
Two variations of the Lange 1 Perpetual Calendar are available. One embraces a 41.9 mm-diameter rose gold case and a gray-hued solid silver dial. The other, a 150-piece limited edition pairs a white gold case with an expressive rose gold face. Both are worn on a leather strap, russet-brown for one version, dark chestnut for the other.
Price: CHF101,000 (rose gold) – CHF112,000 (white gold)
By Dan Diaconu