BY HARLAN CHAPMAN-GREEN
So we’ve already talked about A. Lange & Söhne’s new 1815 UP/DOWN a little bit here on WristReview, but by the time you’re reading this, it will have been over a week since I got to go hands-on with both versions of the new novelty. I’ve had time to reflect on it and speak with certain people at A. Lange & Söhne about the piece.
It seems to me that A. Lange & Söhne’s way of thinking allows it to pick and choose the “weak spots” in the Swiss watch industry, sometimes undercutting them and other times outclassing them. Sometimes the Saxon brand hits the nail on the head, though, and these smaller 1815 UP/DOWN models are the evidence. Ask nearly any manufacturer of goods that are not considered essential items (like food, fuel, toiletries etc), and you’ll likely get an idea of how difficult it can be to work out what a market wants and how they can produce something that resonates with the market’s desire.
We must remember that A. Lange & Söhne also works differently to other watchmakers, in that it develops nearly everything itself. Even if it does not manufacture everything in-house, it does design nearly all of it, including its exceptional movements. The folks working there cannot simply chop and change bits and pieces to meet a trend; any development process is drawn out- developing the newly-released 1815 UP/DOWN models took years. That isn’t to say that no savvy thinking is behind the decision to launch these watches now, the trend is for watches to be smaller than they once were, and A. Lange & Söhne’s executives know this, even if they steer clear of saying they are chasing trends.
What does that leave us with? Two very blue watches. The deep colour stays strong under different lighting conditions; I got to try them both on in A. Lange & Söhne’s flagship boutique on Old Bond Street in London on a surprisingly sunny day with plenty of natural light flowing through the upstairs windows. Yeah, the blue colour looks excellent and it went rather nicely with my blue blazer. All this blue reminds me of a song, well, a few actually.
On the wrist, the 37.5mm x 8.75mm cases sit beautifully. Smaller watches really do seem to suit me more than I used to think they did. I think the rounded, polished bezel and polished lugs, both of which are signatures of nearly all A. Lange & Söhne watches, help to make the cases seem bigger than they are by catching the light of the surrounding area.
Maybe that’s just me, but I feel the same way about the 36mm Rolex Day-Date and also about IWC’s 35mm Ingenieur. Maybe smaller is better.
One thing the size doesn’t affect is the legibility. The 1815 UP/DOWN’s lancet-shaped hands are traditional for A. Lange & Söhne watches, and here they’re polished to a mirror shine to catch the light. They also spread right across the dial, the minute hand touches the outer edge of the “train track” minute indices.
There isn’t any lume here, though, so nighttime reading isn’t an option. The small seconds dial looks good, and the power reserve indicator is easy to read, with AUF meaning ‘up’ (full) and AB meaning ‘down’ (empty). The argenté coloured dials look classy.
Director of product development Anthony de Haas has said on record many times that A. Lange & Söhne designs its movements to match the dial designs nine times out of ten, unless some technical reason from the movement side requires a change. That’s the reason the subdials on A. Lange & Söhne’s Datograph subdials sit lower on the dial. Here, the manually-wound calibre L051.2 isn’t a new movement at all, but it suits the 1815 UP/DOWN nicely.
The finishing is of very high quality, but as ever, most of the view of the movement is taken up by a three-quarter plate made from German silver. The polished gold chatons and heat-blued screws stand out and scream ‘haute horlogerie’, as does the hand-engraved balance cock.
Fun fact: each balance cock is unique to that watch, as each engraver has their own particular pattern, which changes slightly every time they engrave a component. I really need these under my macro lens.
We don’t have exact pricing for these pieces in either 18k pink gold or 18k white gold, but we think they’re priced between €35,000 and €45,000 and are limited to 300 examples each. The folks at A. Lange & Söhne picked a good moment to release these.
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