14h ago
A Comeback for the Lange 1815 Up/Down
A. Lange & Söhne’s mid-sized 1815 Up/Down is reincarnated as a dark blue panda 300-piece limited edition in a slender, 37.5 mm case. More faithful than usual to the Glashütte watchmaking tradition, inside and out, the 1815 Up/Down has a lot to offer for an “entry-level” Lange, if ever there was such a thing. Initial Thoughts The dial’s layout is inspired by the most common location for a up/down indicator on a pocket watch, at 12 o’clock, while the running seconds sits in a small sundial at six o’clock. But when a hunter-type movement is packaged into an open face case the up/down indicator moves to nine o’clock and the seconds to three o’clock, as was the case for many deck watches made by the first A. Lange & Söhne company during the Second World War, which is a very handsome dial layout. The lack of up and down, F and E, haut et bas, or, in this case, AB und AUF, on modern power reserve indicators is a pet peeve of mine, and one of the many things Lange does right. Another is two tone dials, the Datograph, especially the sleeker Datograph Up/Down, is one of the best-looking watches out there, and this look quite similar. That, combined with the smaller 37.5 mm case size (down from 39 mm) makes this 1815 Up/Down quite different from its past lives. For me, it is certainly more up than down, with the best-looking dial and a contemporary mid-sized case, so making it a limited edition of 300 pieces in each colourway is disappointing. Another letdown: I pr...
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