BY HARLAN CHAPMAN-GREEN
You might have expected A. Lange & Söhne to have gotten it all out of their system after the excitement of the Odysseus Chronograph back at Watches & Wonders in March. However, that’s not the case, as the Saxon brand debuts two new models for the summer season.
Lange 1 Timezone 136.025
A few years ago the Lange 1 Timezone was re-imagined, it had been a staple of the Lange 1 collection since 2005 but it hadn’t changed at all since then. The Timezone is a unique watch in the A. Lange & Söhne lineup because it’s one of the few watches they make that shows two timezones simultaneously.
The watch isn’t technically a world time watch. As we’ve discussed before, world time watches need to be able to display the time across all indicated timezones simultaneously, albeit with some mental gymnastics. The Lange 1 Timezone can instead be thought of as a fancier and more complicated dual-timer thanks to the self-wound L141.1 calibre. The minute hands on both dials are coupled but the hours are not. By pressing the pusher on the edge of the case, the city ring advances forwards and takes the small hour hand with it. There’s also an indicator to show whether the timezone in question has daylight saving time or not.
The main change for 2023 is the introduction of the rhodium-coloured dial (made of solid silver) with a 950 platinum case. Silver on silver was my favourite colour combination in the old Timezone and it looks fabulous here, too. Price upon request.
1815 Rattrapante Perpetual Calendar 421.056FE
The second release is a new version of the 1815 Rattrapante Perpetual Calendar. Unlike the Lange 1 Timezone above, this watch is made of 18k white gold, but it still looks remarkable. The dial is made of 18k pink gold although it’s taken on a salmon hue which is quite trendy in higher-end watches right now. We still have yet to see a watch with a green dial, I bet a Datograph would wear that quite well.
It’s no secret that the main draw of the 1815 Rattrapante Perpetual Calendar is the manually-wound calibre L101.1 inside it. 631 individual components have been made, fitted, adjusted, taken apart, polished and then re-fitted and adjusted once more to make these pieces, so it’s no surprise that they’re limited to 100 sold through boutiques only. It’s also not a surprise that these are price upon request.
Unlike the watches based on the Saxonia line like the Datograph or the Triple Split, the 1815 watches pay tribute to older designs by using different fonts and marker styles. 1815 is the year company founder Ferdinand Adolph Lange came into this world, by the way. While the design is a little more intricate past than supermodern European, these still look like modern and classy watches, and the dial seems fairly readable. We’ll know more if we’re able to go hands-on.
We’re now up to three releases from A. Lange & Söhne this year. Usually, they release somewhere between three and ten new watches annually. Given that they released a brand-new Odysseus Chronograph, we might not be getting much else from them this year. Still, there’s loads to go on.
