Beyond the Familiar: A. Lange & Söhne’s 1815 Retrospective
Ferdinand Adolph Lange was born in Dresden on February 18, 1815. Thirty years later he’d found the eponymous company, and 145 years after that a reborn A. Lange & Söhne would rise from the proverbial ashes of East Germany. The A. Lange & Söhne we know today debuted in 1994 when the brand launched four watches: Arkade, Saxonia, Lange 1, and the flagship Tourbillon Pour le Mérite, which established a set of visual codes that would later define the 1815 collection. Today, the 1815 family is primarily known for its many time-only variants, the 1815 Up/Down, and, of course, the 1815 Chronograph. However, the 1815 collection also includes some of the brand’s most extraordinary, unusual, and rarely seen models. Photo credits: @lelangelust and @scatteringphotons Lange 1815 Emil Lange Moon Phase, c. 1999 The Tourbillon Pour le Mérite of 1994 defined the 1815 collection’s design codes, specifically the printed Arabic dial that is vaguely reminiscent of a pocket watch despite being an almost from-scratch design. However, it was not officially badged as an 1815. That designation arrived the following year with the refs. 206.021 in yellow gold and 206.025 in white gold. These introductions saw the rectangular movement inside the Arkade and Saxonia reformatted to make it presentable through a display case back. The extra space was put to use in the followup 1815 Up/Down, which added the namesake power reserve indicator and recreated the running seconds. In 1999, Lange launched...
Time+Tide
