The A. Lange & Söhne Richard Lange Jumping Seconds and 1815 Tourbillon Return with Ravishing New Dials

Few watch manufactures are as admired and discussed today as A. Lange & Söhne. Recently, Haute Time has been tracing the brand’s remarkable trajectory—shaped by inventive watchmaking and punctuated by extraordinary milestones.

Now, with the unveiling of two new timepieces, we have the perfect opportunity to revisit some of Lange’s most ingenious technical achievements, including the stop-seconds, zero-reset, jumping seconds, and remontoir mechanisms.

The first is the 1815 Tourbillon “Grand Feu”, limited to 50 pieces. It returns with a white-gold dial that has been painstakingly enameled black and housed in a 39.5 mm platinum case. Named after founder Ferdinand Adolph Lange’s birth year, the 1815 collection debuted in 1994 following the brand’s revival, while the collection’s first tourbillon appeared in 2014 in platinum and pink gold versions. This latest release marks the fifth 1815 Tourbillon and the 12th Lange timepiece to feature an enamel dial.

The enameling of this watch is a tip of the hat to enameled A. Lange & Söhne pocket watches of the 19th and 20th centuries. Enameling is a delicate craft prone to failure, and the name Grand Feu literally translates to “big fire.” Each dial requires around 30 layers of enamel, applied and fired at high temperatures in a dust-free workshop over the course of several days. Afterward, lettering is pad-printed, followed by enameled numerals, indices, and the Lange logo. These details are framed by the collection’s signature railway-track minute scale.

The dramatic black dial is matched by the meticulously black-polished finish on the tourbillon bridge and cage. This technique, which involves sliding a component against a tin plate with fine paste until it achieves a mirror-like gloss, produces one of the most unforgiving yet beautiful surface treatments in haute horlogerie.

For this enamel dial iteration of the 1815 Tourbillon, careful hand-chamfering is required to prepare the throne of the tourbillon—one misstep can forsake days of enamel work. This process contributes to the hundred-plus individual steps required for each dial, often stretching into weeks of work.

Inside beats the manual-winding caliber L102.1, offering a 72-hour power reserve. Like its predecessors, it features Lange’s in-house balance spring and is adjusted in five positions to meet the brand’s exacting chronometric standards. True to Lange’s codes, untreated German silver plates and bridges are decorated by hand, while the tourbillon is anchored with a diamond endstone in a screwed gold chaton.

The watch also incorporates two historic Lange patents that are cornerstones of the manufacture. First off, the stop-seconds mechanism, which was debuted in the relaunched brand’s first collection in 1994, halts the tourbillon for precise time setting. Secondly, the zero-reset function, which was first introduced in the 1997 Langematik, sends the seconds hand back to zero when the crown is pulled, and also turns this watch into a chronograph of sorts. Together, they facilitate the easy and precise setting of the 1815 Tourbillon.

The second release is the Richard Lange Jumping Seconds, limited to 100 pieces, with a pink gold dial inside a 39.9 mm white gold case. This collection pays tribute to Richard Lange—Adolph’s eldest son and a key innovator in watch spring alloys—and draws inspiration from Johann Heinrich Seyffert’s celebrated Chronometer No. 93.

Its defining feature is a jumping seconds display, where the seconds hand advances in precise one-second steps rather than sweeping. A mechanical watch’s seconds hand usually tells time through a sweeping motion, but a star-shaped gear, in this instance, converts the natural oscillation of the escapement into 60 discrete jumps per minute.

The seconds register dominates the dial at 12 o’clock, overlapping the smaller hours and minutes subdials. At their intersection sits a clever triangular indicator that turns red ten hours before the power reserve runs out, reminding the wearer to wind the movement.

Powering the watch is the in-house caliber L094.1, equipped with both stop-seconds and zero-reset functions, as well as a constant-force escapement with remontoir spring. In simple terms, the remontoir acts like a pacemaker: it evens out the delivery of energy to the balance, keeping the “heart rate” of the movement uniform. The principle of resonance states that two coupled oscillating systems will synchronize to the same frequency, so it’s akin to two runners trying to keep pace—if one sprints or slows, the other helps correct the rhythm.

First unveiled in 2016, this is the fourth Richard Lange Jumping Seconds and also the fourth Lange watch to feature a pink gold dial. As always with Lange, every element is finished to the highest standard, right down to the engraved balance cock—arguably the house’s most recognizable flourish, and a signature of German horological artistry.