1815 Phases de Lune

The “165 Years – Homage to F.A. Lange” anniversary collection pays tribute to the founder of Germany’s precision watchmaking industry and to the trailblazing creations devised in his manufactory: they are what kept the legend alive for four generations of the watchmaking dynasty in the first place. One of them is the Grand Complication with the serial number 42500, initiated by Emil Lange, the second son of the founder. Made in 1902, its Louis XVI case in 18-carat gold accommodates a chiming mechanism with a grand strike and a small strike, a minute repeater, a split-seconds chronograph with a The TOURBOGRAPH “Pour le Mérite” from the anniversary collectionminute counter and flying seconds, as well as a perpetual calendar with a moon-phase display. This one-of-a-kind watch, exceptional in every respect, was sent to Lange in a seriously corroded condition. Many of the 833 parts had to be painstakingly refash- ioned by specialists in the restoration workshop. But after several years of meticulous repair work, all components of the complicated mechanism work again – as perfectly as more than a hundred years ago. 

With three impressive timekeeping instruments that give a new face to the enduring watchmaking tradition of the Lange family as regards technical and aesthetic perfec- tion, Lange’s 21st-century watchmakers salute the spiritual legacy of their great mentor. The capabilities of the manufactory are expressed by all three models with a novel case metal developed exclusively for Lange. With a Vickers hardness of over 300, the 18-carat honey-coloured gold exclusively developed for Lange is about twice as hard as other gold alloys. Breathing beneath the hand-engraved balance cock made of the same material is a balance spring developed and manufactured in-house. It symbolises the innovative energy with which every Lange watch is endowed. A guilloched solid-gold dial and a sunburst finish on the three-quarter plate of the 1815 MOONPHASE and the crown wheel cock of the LANGE 1 TOURBILLON allude to the proud ancestral artisanship of the family tradition. A look at all three watches together – and at the concepts they embody – reaffirms Lange’s axiomatic claim “state-of-the-art tradition”. It lives in the Lange pocket watches of old as fervently as in the oeuvres crafted by today’s master watchmakers.

The 1815 MOONPHASE epitomises Lange’s unending quest for the ultimate in preci- sion. No effort was spared to calculate an extremely accurate moon-phase train for this watch. Thanks to a suite of wheels with special transmission ratios, its error per lunar month is a nearly infinitesimal 6.61 seconds. It takes 1,058 years for this error to add up to a deviation of one day relative to the actual lunar cycle. Had such a timepiece existed in the year 952 – during the lifetime of Otto I the Great – and had it run without interruption since then, its moon-phase display would have to be corrected for the first time this year. 

Among collectors, the 1999 limited edition pieces of the 1815 MOONPHASE in pink gold and platinum with a black dial rank among the most sought-after Lange timepieces. Their hallmark is an artistic rendering of the “Big Dipper”, probably the best-known constellation, on the dial. At watch auctions, well-maintained exemplars of this coveted treas- ure sometimes fetch more than three times the original price. The value of the 1815 MOONPHASE “Homage to F. A. Lange” could follow a similar trend: its edition is lim- ited to 265 watches world-wide.