BackA Lange and Söhne’s Grand Complication
There are million-dollar watches. And there are million-dollar watches. And there is a vast gulf in between
Premium(The Grand Complication by A. Lange and Söhne.)
A few years ago, before Lehman Brothers capsized, taking the whole world economy with it, million-dollar watches weren’t hard to come by. There were two ways, if you so willed it, of blowing that much money on a watch. You could buy a rare Patek Philippe at an auction. Or you could buy a brand new, diamond-paved, limited-edition monstrosity from any one of the numerous brands cashing in on the world’s endless supply of rich, tasteless people.
And then the world economy went to hell in a handbasket and watches suddenly got cheaper, smaller and entirely more sober. Big was suddenly bad, and small was sexy. Suddenly, brands that once flaunted timepieces big enough to serve an entire T-bone steak on were presenting slim, affordable pieces “inspired by the classic pieces from our brand heritage".
(Here’s a watch advertising tip: If it has the word “heritage" in it, the copy was probably written by a 24-year-old intern in marketing.)
So, in 2013, there is precisely one circumstance in which a brand can sell a new watch for over a million euros and still expect it to be taken seriously: the watch has to be bloody awesome. It has to be jaw-droppingly, breathtakingly, spine-chillingly awesome. It has to be complicated enough to scare away all the amateurs, but still sensible enough so one can wear it with a suit. It must have the potential to be a conversation-starter, but the sobriety to keep calm and tick on. It should be a timepiece for the ages. And it shouldn’t—so help us god—have a single carat’s worth of rock of any kind on it.
For all those reasons, and more, A. Lange and Söhne’s new Grand Complication watch that was released earlier this year is a wonder to behold. No doubt it is debatable if the watch is really worth the €1.92 million price tag. But there is no question that the piece, simply called the Grand Complication, is something of a modern masterpiece in watchmaking. And when masterpieces are in question, who knows how much they are worth?
The watch was launched at SIHH with Lange’s typical Teutonic underplay. As usual, they herded the press into a hall and talked them through the brand’s major releases for this year. As usual, there was little to complain about. Lange is not a brand that likes to surprise or overwhelm with histrionics. Instead, it lets its timepieces speak for themselves.
Towards the end of the presentation, Tino Bobe, the company’s technical director, unveiled what seemed like the brand’s flagship new launch for the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie (SIHH): the superb 1815 Rattrapante Perpetual Calendar. This was a high-end piece with a new movement and a remarkably balanced dial, reminiscent of vintage Lange pocket watches (see box: A history of A.Lange and Söhne).
This Rattrapante Perpetual Calendar is the kind of watch that most brands in the world can only dream of making. There are, perhaps, no more than two dozen brands that could make and sell a high-quality watch of this nature.
Tino Bobe, however, had one more ace up his sleeve. Lange’s new Grand Complication.
But even for Lange, this was an uncommon proposition, one that would take some explaining.
So later that week, a few days after the presentation, Mint Indulge spoke to both: Bobe and Anthony De Haas, Lange’s head of product development.
Bobe said the Grand Complication was a project that took seven years of hard graft to realize. “Phew! It is a huge weight off our shoulders. Now we can legitimately say that we belong to the top tier of watchmaking."
Bobe said that Lange had always presented at least one critically acclaimed complicated watch at each of the previous two or three fairs. But connoisseurs and watch experts have always been waiting for that one big Lange piece. And finally, he said, they had done it: “I am not exaggerating. Some people actually had tears in their eyes. After years of waiting, they have now seen our Grand Complication. Their just went…"
Bobe opened his eyes and let his mouth drop open.
In 2011, Lange unveiled its first watch with an acoustic indicator of time, the Zeitwerk Striking Time. Even then, it was something audacious to do. When many brands come up with new movements or complications, they like to try them out on a limited-edition first, without rocking the boat for existing pieces.
Lange took the exact opposite route. The company integrated the complication into its hugely popular Zeitwerk family. It was very well received, but even then Lange made it clear that the Striking Time was the harbinger of greater, more complicated things to come.
“We said two years ago that the Zeitwerk Striking Time was just our first step when it comes to the acoustical indication of time," Bobe said.
But why go from a comparatively simple complication—the Striking Time used a system of gongs and hammers to tell the hour and quarter hour—to the mind-boggling Grand Complication?
The Grand Complication includes both: a petite and a grande sonnerie, a minute repeater, a monopusher flyback chronograph with flying seconds, a perpetual calendar, and finally, a moon-phase.
Why didn’t Lange first graduate from the Striking Time to a more conventional Minute Repeater, before aspiring for the Grand Complication?
Bobe says the idea was, essentially, to blow people’s minds. “We wanted to do something big. Something that was unconventional. Something that would make people take us very seriously."
Even though the project took a lot of time—and there was a lot of impatient grumbling on watch forums and connoisseur websites—Bobe says that they didn’t want to rush themselves.
De Haas joined Lange as head of product development in October 2004. He came with a rich
De Haas says that it would have been easier to launch a minute repeater. People would have seen the watch, appreciated it, and then moved on. “What is the point in that? If you are going to do something big…do it really big! Make a boom! Do something that is worthy of the Lange brand."
The challenge, he says, was that Lange simply didn’t have striking watches in its pedigree. In fact, he says, the entire Glashutte region, where Lange has its headquarters, had no history of making striking watches. This meant creating a brain trust from scratch.
Despite these constraints, De Haas says, Lange embarked on the project seven years ago with the end-product perfectly designed out. This was not a product improvised based on technological limitations, but a product brute-forced into existence.
At €1.92 million per piece, and a substantial waiting period, Bobe says that demand has been surprisingly robust. Rumours were rife at SIHH that someone from the Asian market had booked not one, not two, but three watches. (There were even rumours that Lange had already sold all six.)
The first Grand Complication will be completed, tested and shipped to a buyer in 2014. That piece should instantly become a collector’s item.
For Lange, this is the end of a long process. But one that has ended in a new chapter in the company’s history and myth. Unfortunately, watch enthusiasts are never satiated. Odds are that someone at Lange is already working on the next big thing.
(For extended reviews of all of Lange’s watches and launches by other major brands, and complete interviews with Anthony De Haas and Tino Bobe, stay tuned for the Indulge special on SIHH due in the next couple of months.)
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