Keeping time with history
But, if they also bring peerless quality with them, then it makes the experience of ownership that much richer and pleasurable.
The Grand Lange 1, a Dh192,000 platinum-cased watch by A Lange and Söhne, a German company that has nearly two-centuries of watchmaking history behind it and generations of family pride and tradition, falls in this category.
It all started with Ferdinand Adolph Lange, a young man from the Saxon town of Glashütte, who put his small and impoverished town on the map of the world by becoming the founder of the German precision watchmaking industry in the 19th century.
Lange did a three-year watchmaking apprenticeship with Johann Christian Friedrich Gutkaes, the famous clockmaker and keeper of the tower clock at the royal Saxon court in Dresden.
After completing his apprenticeship, this young dreamer, travelled to Paris to look for a job.
After working in Paris for Josef Thaddäus Winnerl, a famous chronometermaker for four years, Ferdinand worked in England and Switzerland, in order to expand and enhance his knowledge of watchmaking.
During this period he filled a workbook with drawings of movements and details as well as mathematically researched ratios for wheels and pinions. Then he returned to Dresden, where he was re-employed by Gutkaes and became co-owner of the business.
However, he was struck by the poverty that prevailed in the once mineral rich Ore Mountain region, and decided to act.
He lobbied with the Royal Saxon Ministry of Interior for the creation of a watch manufactory in Glashütte. He was finally granted a repayable loan and in turn agreed to train 15 Glashütte youths as watchmakers.
This difficult but courageous venture was rewarded with success and soon Glashütte became a fertile ground for many small workshops specialised in jewels, screws, wheels, spring barrels, balances, hands, cases, gilding and engraving.
Hundreds of safe and well-paid jobs soon transformed poverty into modest prosperity. With the establishment of the German Watchmaking School by Lange’s academically minded friend Moritz Grossmann in 1878, Glashütte finally cut the umbilical cord to France and Switzerland to become Germany’s hub of horology.
Until the manufactory was expropriated after the Second World War, A Lange and Söhne watches had ranked among the most prestigious and sought-after timekeeping instruments in the world. When the seized companies in Glashütte were merged in 1951 to form a large people’s combine, the proud signature that had adorned so many a dial sank into oblivion and in collectors’ circles, the name A Lange and Söhne became a legend.
However, the company was to rise like a phoenix in 1990, when Ferdinand’s great-grandson Walter Lange, saw an opportunity to breathe new life into his family’s great legacy when Germany was reunited in 1990.
He established Lange Uhren GmbH on December 7, 1990, 145 years to the day after his great-grandfather had arrived in the Saxon town of Glashütte. Lange and Söhne swept back on to the stage of time in 1994.
Today, as once before, the products crafted by the traditional workshops in the Ore Mountains rank among the world’s most coveted watches. A legend had risen from the ashes and the Grand Lange 1 is a living proof of that.
Fabian Krone, CEO of Lange Uhren, told Emirates Business: “The watch gets its name from the fact that it is larger version of the original Lange 1, which symbolises the renaissance of the A Lange and Söhne brand in the early 1990s.
“Since 2003, the manufactory has been creating the Grand Lange 1 for the aficionados of exquisite mechanical timepieces who prefer a slightly larger case.
“The redesigned Grand Lange 1, launched during the prestigious Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie held in Geneva in April this year possesses an elegantly reworked dial, with delicate azure grooves, creating a stronger visual rapport between the Lange 1 and the Grand Lange 1.”
“However, each and every A Lange and Söhne watch is a unique handcrafted piece of art, as each balance cock is hand engraved and the craftsmanship that goes into the making of each watch is exclusive to each piece.”