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A. Lange & Söhne

A. Lange & Söhne Brightens Saxonia

Just in time for the holiday season, A. Lange & Söhne adds sparkle to two models within its Saxonia collection.

First, the Glashütte-based watchmaker is debuting its newest Saxonia Thin with a solid-silver dial coated with shimmering black gold flux. The newest model reprises the glittery aspect of the much-discussed blue-gold flux dial first seen on the Saxonia Thin from 2018.

The new A. Lange & Söhne Saxonia Thin with a solid-silver dial coated with shimmering black gold flux. Limited to 50 pieces.

The newest edition is one millimeter larger in diameter (40mm versus 39mm for the blue flux dial version) but maintains the same 6.2mm thickness, slim hour and minute hands and applied baton-style markers. The new model’s unusual black gold flux dial shimmers thanks to tiny copper-colored particles, which make the deep-black surface sparkle.

A.Lange & Söhne explains that the production process for gold flux was discovered during the 17thcentury in Venice. The glass and its copper constituents are heated, forming microscopically small copper crystals. Artisans must then carefully cast the material onto the silver dial in order to maintain an even, homogeneous surface.

A. Lange & Söhne places the very thin (2.9mm) manual-wind wound caliber L093.1 inside the Saxonia Thin.

Inside, A. Lange & Söhne places the very thin (2.9mm) manual-wind wound caliber L093.1, A. Lange & Söhne’s thinnest movement that, despite its compact size, offers a power reserve of three days.

Like the blue version, the new black gold-flux dial on this Saxonia Thin is a premiere for any A. Lange & Söhne watch. The new model, unlike the earlier piece, is a limited edition, with fifty pieces on offer. Price: $25,800.

Saxonia Outsize Date

The watchmaker’s other dial update finds the A. Lange & Söhne Saxonia Outsize Date now available with a silver-colored dial, offered on 38.5mm white gold or a pink gold case (above). This addition complements the existing black-dialed options.

The new A. Lange & Sohne Saxonai Outsize Date, here in white gold with an silver-colored dial.

You might recall that this collection highlights its otherwise minimalistic dial with a large presentation of the date near the top of the dial. Made specifically to enhance visibility, the large date indicator (a touchstone display for the brand) is unusual in that it utilizes two separate display surfaces for the units and tens and is at least twice as large as in watches of a comparable size.

A. Lange & Söhne balances the date with a subsidiary seconds dial at the 6 o’clock position. The watchmaker has developed its automatic L086.8 movement with a particularly strong mainspring barrel in order to deliver an impressive power reserve of 72 hours. Price: $27,700.

The new Saxonia Outsize Date (two models, at left) and the new Saxonia Thin.
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The Watches

Tutima Pilots a Limited Edition Flieger Chronograph

Tutima has launched the Flieger Friday Edition, a limited edition that echoes the German brand’s famed pilot watch from 1941. In place of the original’s brass case, Tutima cases the new model in satin-finished steel as it did with its vintage-inspired Ref. 783-01 Flieger model from the early 1990s. The case size of the new watch is the same as the 1941 model however, measuring 38.5 mm in diameter.

The new Tutima Flieger Friday Edition.

Just as importantly, however, to collectors of vintage pilot watches, Tutima retained all the original model’s significant tactile features. Thus, here we find a bi-directional, fluted, rotating bezel with red reference marker. In addition, Tutima has designed the watch’s large cathedral hands to match the original. The dial features the Tutima logo and numerals in the watch’s original fonts.

The Tutima 1941 Flieger (right) and Classic Flieger 783 Chronograph from the 1990s.

Equally impressive to purists is the movement, which, like the 1941 edition, is built from a Valjoux 7760 chronograph caliber that Tutima enhances with a flyback function.  In its original run, the movement was known as Caliber 59 and was the first German-made two-pusher flyback chronograph wristwatch. Today, Tutima refers to it simply by its base manual-wind caliber, now made to modern specifications by ETA, and again enhances it with a flyback function.

Updates

Tutima has also updated other features on the watch, including the illumination of hands and markers. All are now treated with a bright SuperLuminova compound. Similarly, Tutima has coated the domed sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating for maximum legibility.

Tutima Flieger Friday Edition, showing caseback with gold-plated bridge on movement.

Also new, the caseback is fitted with a sapphire crystal to better showcase the gold-plated bridge Tutima has placed in the ETA Valjoux 7760 caliber. The clear back also exposes the Tutima engraving. The 1941 original was housed in a nickel-plated brass case with screw-down caseback.

The Tutima Flieger Friday Edition, showing dial illumination.

The limited-edition new member of Tutima’s Flieger collection comes with a vintage pilot style leather strap. Each of the 25 editions are individually numbered and engraved, and all arrive with a printed certificate of authenticity.

Price: $3,450

 

Specifications: Tutima Flieger Friday Chronograph Limited-Edition

Case: 38.5mm x 15.5mm steel with steel, fluted, bi-directional bezel. Water resistance to 100 meters.

Movement: Manual-wind ETA Valjoux 7760 modified by Tutima, 28,800 VPH, 48-hour power reserve, gold-plated bridge and Tutima engraving.

Dial: Displaying hours, minutes, small seconds, central chronograph seconds

Strap: Vintage pilot leather strap

Price: $3,450

 

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The Watches

Corum Celebrates Four Decades of Golden Bridge

Corum pays tribute to its Golden Bridge with two new limited edition models, each celebrating the watch’s 40th anniversary. Corum has frequently revisited the Golden Bridge in the forty years since the watchmaker debuted its first watch with the linear-gear movement.

The first Golden Bridge,designed by Vincent Calebrese and launched by Corum in 1980.

The architecturally sublime caliber, initially designed by Vincent Calabrese, was re-engineered by Corum in 2011 and has been variously offered since then with manual winding or automatic winding.  While Corum usually places the in-line movement in a rectangular or tonneau case, Corum began offering the movement within round cases for the first time in 2016 with precious metal and gem-settings.

With these two anniversary Golden Bridge models, Corum returns to the original manual-wind caliber designs. In the Caliber CO113, the viewer’s eyes are drawn along the path following the movement’s energy transfer, starting at the spring barrel at 6 o’clock up to the escapement at 12 o’clock.

The new Corum Golden Bridge Rectangle 40th Anniversary in 18-karat white gold.

White gold or rose gold

With this commemorative offering, Corum emphasizes the Golden Bridge’s original rectangular case. Two 29.5mm by 42.2mm models, one in white gold and one with a rose gold case, celebrate not only the Golden Bridge’s anniversary, but also an aspect of Corum’s own history as a new watchmaking company, founded in 1955.

On the white gold Golden Bridge Rectangle 40th anniversary model, Corum hand-engraves flowers onto the case in reference to its ongoing collection of Haute Horlogerie models. The depictions of the acanthus and fern plants are a nod to a style created in Corum’s home of La Chaux-de-Fonds. These are the same engravings Corum has placed on all Golden Bridge baguette movements since the timepiece was launched in 1980.

The white gold Corum Golden Bridge Rectangle 40th Anniversary is limited to three pieces honoring Corum’s three co-founders.

The new Corum Golden Bridge Rectangle 40th Anniversary in 18-karat rose gold.

With the rose gold edition of the Golden Bridge Rectangle 40th Anniversary watch, Corum is also celebrating its own sixty-fifth birthday. This 18-karat rose gold version will be made as a limited edition of forty pieces, each engraved “Limited Edition 1 0f 40” inside the case at 3 o’clock. In addition, you’ll find the Corum key logo metallized in an eye-catching, light-diffusing pattern on a sapphire crystal caseback.

Prices: $39,800 (rose gold, limited edition of forty pieces), $42,800 (white gold, limited edition of three pieces).

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Watch Of The Day

Looking Back: A Rear View of the Krayon Anywhere

With Anywhere, the second debut from independent Swiss watchmaker Krayon, the wearer can see sunset and sunrise times for any single location indicated on the dial.

The watch, with its all-new C030 manual-wind caliber, streamlines the functions of the earlier Krayon Everywhere, on which (you guessed it) the wearer can see sunset and sunrise times across the globe. That watch was awarded the Innovation Prize at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG) in 2018.

The back of the Krayon Anywhere, showing Manual-winding Cal. C030. The bridge edges echo the shape of one of the rivers that empties into Lake Neuchâtel.

Like the dial, the back of the newer celestial complication is also less encumbered, with large, expertly polished plates that hide the gears below. Watch engineer Rémi Maillat, who worked on so many of Cartier’s superb, complicated calibers prior to founding Krayon in 2017, places the hours, minutes and seconds beneath this larger plate.

A portion of the sunset and sunrise complication dominates the lower section of the movement. Framing a threaded and adjustable transverse screw is a dramatic two-level cam that rotates, pushing two racks to continuously transmit the information required to activate the dial’s sunset and sunrise displays.

Krayon will adjust two screws (visible within a set of rubies at each side of the visible cam) to account for longitudinal differences in sunset and sunrise.

The cam, which the watchmaker can customize according to the owner’s chosen latitude, rotates fully once each year. Krayon will adjust two screws (visible within a set of rubies at each side of the cam) to account for longitudinal differences in sunset (left side) and sunrise (right side).

PERSONAL DÉCOR

A close-up of the back of the Krayon Anywhere, showing the movement’s expert hand-polished beveling.

Maillat’s wavy bridge décor is not simply eye-catching. It’s also personal. The manually beveled edges of the larger bridge echo the shape of one of the rivers that empties into Lake Neuchâtel, near Maillat’s home in Switzerland. The bridge’s waves trace the position of the watch’s cam during a Neuchâtel sunset, according to Krayon. All the bridges, and even the cam, feature perfectly mirror-polished anglage.

Thanks to a thin (5mm) movement, Krayon has managed to maintain a 9mm thick case for the Anywhere despite all this complexity. And at only 39mm in diameter the Krayon Anywhere may be among the smaller high-end designs offering a sunrise/sunset display. And with the obvious attention paid to its back view, it is certainly among the most beautiful.

The dial side of the Krayon Anywhere in rose gold.

 

 

 

The Essentials

Movement: Manual-winding Cal. C030 showing (on dial) hours and minutes, sunrise and sunset times, 24-hour display, simple calendar, month. Wave-décor on bridges with hand-polished beveling throughout. and Power reserve is 86 hours, 3 Hz frequency,  55 jewels,432 components.

Case: 39mm by 9.5mm white gold or rose gold with alligator strap and matching gold buckle. Price: 116,000 Swiss Francs (about $127,000)

This article first appears in the Fall 2020 edition of International Watch.

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Watch Of The Day

New Nomos Tetra Evokes a Spark

Nomos celebrates Beethoven’s 250th birthday with a square-cased Tetra Divine Spark watch made with a copper-hued dial. The color is meant to elevate the wearer’s mood and to recall Schiller’s “Ode to Joy,” which Beethoven set to music in his 9th Symphony.

Tetra Divine Spark from Nomos Glashütte.

The watch is one of four Tetra designs within the Nomos Tetra Symphony collection. While another of the collection’s models is actually called the Tetra Ode to Joy, it’s this copper-dialed version that Nomos says will ignite a ‘spark to the wrist.”

The full Nomos Tetra Symphony series.

Nomos extends the Tetra Divine Spark’s upbeat metallic tone by utilizing three gold hands to indicate hours, minutes and seconds. All three play nicely with the 29.5mm by 29.5mm polished steel case.

Tetra has long been among Nomos’ most elegant offerings, whether with its original manual-wind Alpha caliber inside (like with this new model) or set with an automatic caliber. Note the perfectly executed overlapping lugs, slim dial font and, for this model, the subtle grey velour strap. All in all, a tuneful composition.

Price: $2,080.

 

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