A special model of the 1815 CHRONOGRAPH is the award that for the first time awaits this year’s owner of the most attractive car at the, tradition-steeped competition for classic automobiles – Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este.
A. Lange & Söhne has been a partner of the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este since 2012, which this year will be held on Lake Como between the 1st to the 3rd of October. Every year, Lange CEO Wilhelm Schmid has presented the owner of the competition’s most elegant vehicle with a LANGE 1 TIME ZONE “Como Edition”.
Each of these watches is a unique piece, as the hand-engraved hinged cuvette refers to the event: The “CONCORSO D’ELEGANZA VILLA D’ESTE” signature frames the coat of arms as well as the founding year 1929 and the current event year. They bridge the span from the first Concorso d’Eleganza to the present. This exceptional watch is not for sale. It is reserved exclusively for the winner in the “Best in Show” category.
For the first time, this timepiece is an 18-carat white-gold edition of the 1815 CHRONOGRAPH with a pink-gold dial and a hand-engraved hinged cuvette. The selection of this watch, one of the most beautiful column-wheel-controlled flyback chronographs, as the new trophy is a reminiscence of the historic link between motor sport and time measurement.
The 1815 CHRONOGRAPH in the 39.5-millimetre white-gold case melds classic design with mechanical ingenuity. With its Arabic numerals and the railway-track minute scale, the dial in pink gold recalls A. Lange & Söhne’s legendary pocket watches. The brown subsidiary dials for the seconds and the minute counter contrast well against the bright background. The black rho-diumed gold hands for the hours and minutes, that match the case, and the steel chronograph hand, the subsidiary seconds hand and the minute-counter hand, which are also rhodiumed, en-sure good legibility as well. A dark-brown strap made of hand-stitched leather with a prong buckle in white gold rounds out the colour concept.
The manually wound calibre L951.5 features column-wheel control, a snail for the precisely jumping minute counter, and a refined flyback function. It has a power reserve of 60 hours. A large cam-poised balance wheel driven by a freely oscillating hairspring crafted in-house assures superior rate accuracy. Because it beats at a frequency of 18,000 semi-oscilla-tions per hour (2.5 hertz), the watch delivers readings of stopped times with the accuracy of one-fifth of a second. The sapphire-crystal caseback reveals the lavishly hand-finished chronograph mechanism.
Technical Specifications:
1815 CHRONOGRAPH
Ref. 414.049
| Movement | Lange manufacture calibre L951.5, manually wound, crafted to the most exacting Lange quality standards, decorated and assembled by hand; precision-adjusted in five positions; plates and bridges made of untreated German silver; balance cock engraved by hand |
| Movement parts | 306 |
| No. of jewels | 34 |
| Screwed gold chatons | 4 |
| Escapement | Lever escapement |
| Oscillation system | Shock-resistant cam-poised balance; balance spring manu-factured in-house, frequency of 18,000 semi-oscillations per hour, precision beat-adjustment system with lateral setscrew and whiplash spring |
| Power reserve | 60 hours when fully wound |
| Functions | Time indicated in hours, minutes and subsidiary seconds with stop seconds; flyback chronograph with precisely jumping mi-nute counter; pulsimeter scale |
| Operating elements | Crown for winding the watch and setting the time, two push-ers for operating the chronograph |
| Case dimensions | Diameter: 39.5 millimetres; height: 11.9 millimetres |
| Movement | Diameter: 30.6 millimetres; height: 6.1 millimetres |
| Case | 18-carat white gold; hinged cuvette, hand-engraved |
| Dial | 18-carat pink gold; subsidiary dials: brown |
| Hands and appliques | Hours and minutes: rhodiumed gold; chronograph hand, sec-onds hand and minute counter: rhodiumed steel |
| Glass and caseback | Sapphire crystal (Mohs hardness 9) |
| Strap | Hand-stitched leather, dark brown |
| Buckle | 18-carat white-gold prong buckle |
| Limited edition | 1 watch |