By Harlan Chapman-Green
Wait a minute, aren’t Lange German, and isn’t the phrase ‘Pour le Mérite’ a French one? What’s going on with that? To answer these questions briefly, yes, yes and you’ll need to read on to find out. If you’re gonna be late for your meeting or a date or something then I’d suggest stopping here and getting a move on. Those were indeed good questions, though, and yes Lange normally assigns very german phrases such as Wochentag-Automatik (simply means Day-of-the-week Automatic winding). ‘Pour le Mérite’ is the term A.Lange & Söhne uses to denote the collection of watches that get the most attention in the manufacture. While that doesn’t mean that their other watches are anything less in technical terms, every manufacture has a collection they just don’t need to advertise and it’ll sell, such as the DateJust for Rolex, or the classical Royal Oak for Audemars Piguet, the Richard Lange watches are the same.
The main reason this one will fly out more quickly than others is that not only is it a rarer production Lange watch, but it’s got a classical combination that works on so many levels. White metals combined with a black dial can turn even a humble sports watch like a no-date Submariner into a classy dress watch. White dials are the more traditional colour for formal occasions, just as a white tie is as well, but that doesn’t mean to say that this could become a new thing, black tie is a great looking alternative.
“Every manufacture has a collection they just don’t need to advertise and it’ll sell, such as the DateJust for Rolex, or the classical Royal Oak for Audemars Piguet, the Richard Lange watches are the same.”
Onto the more technical stuff, a Lange watch wouldn’t be nearly as impressive if it didn’t have an in-house made movement and an ETA base jammed in instead would it? The movement inside this piece is remarkable too, in the traditional Lange method we’ve come to know, the balance cock has been hand engraved with the signature pattern of the individual who engraved it. The rest has been given the standard striped design we all love. The stand out for this watch, though, has to be the power train assembly. In most watches, the energy required to move the hands gets to the escapement from the mainspring barrel through a series of gears and regulators which make sure the watch doesn’t run out of control for a few seconds and then stop.
The powertrain system in this is something to behold, just like in the Richard Lange Tourbillon ‘Pour le Mérit’, this one uses a Fusée and Chain mechanism to regulate the power to the escapement. This works well thanks to a microscopic chain that’s made up of 636 parts all on its own, all of which have to be carefully decorated. This eliminates the need for other things such as a Constant Force Escapement, another method Lange uses to hold in all that go juice. The reason we don’t see this more often is that it really is an art form and one of the most demanding things you could put in a watch, it should really be its own separate complication, to be honest. Putting that into a case only 40.5mm in diameter and 10.5mm thick is even harder. The watch will sell for $82,500, not a lot considering the rose gold version preceding this was well over $100,000. This made us wonder just what the competition will do to compete with this, if they even plan to. Could this be the start of high-end manufactures duking it out over time only watches? It’s a cliché to say only time will tell, and yet. For more info, please visit alange-soehne.com
