A. Lange & Söhne Zeitwerk Honeygold Lumen Watch Review
In 2009, the high-end watch brand, A. Lange & Söhne released the innovative Zeitwerk. Upholding the firm’s reputation for discreet refinement and peerless engineering, the Zeitwerk conveyed time in a wonderfully succinct digital format. Now the Manufactory in Saxony has created another sublime variant of this technical tour de force, the A. Lange & Söhne Zeitwerk Honeygold Lumen. The fabulous wordsmith, Mark McArthur Christie, provides his thoughts on this high-end timepiece in his own inimitable style.
A watch made by A. Lange & Söhne invariably has a charming, slightly stealthy quality. Softly spoken, tastefully understated and as well put-together as a W126 S-Class. It’s the kind of watch you buy if you really know your stuff, simply because, unless your one of the kenner, you know no one else really gets it. And, what’s more, you don’t care.
At least, that was how it was until 2009. We knew where we were with A. Lange & Söhne. Then the Glashütte-based Manufactory unveiled the Zeitwerk. Remember the Mercedes W124 E500 – the V8 thug in a dinner jacket they co-developed and built with Porsche? Same.
Unless you know what you’re looking at, the E500 looks like the default Münich taxi but in ominous black rather than beige. OK, the wheel arches are a little wider and it sits a little lower, but take the badge off and most people would walk past without knowing they were in the presence of an engine that’ll hurl a 1,700kg slab of steel effortlessly up the road at 160mph in near silence.
Likewise the Zeitwerk. Unless you know your watches, you’d probably just think ‘That’s nice,” as you went off looking for something blingy with diamonds on the dial. Where some watches almost throw cleverness at you with reciprocating this, retrograde that and fusée the other, the Zeitwerk quietly gets on with being classy and ace.
Look at the Lange website and you’ll see the modest “The ZEITWERK features a digital display…” as though this was the simplest thing in the world. And, to be fair, it is. Mechanical digital watches have been around since the late nineteenth century. But this is not, despite the firm’s claims, just a digital display. The fact that the Zeitwerk has its own department in Glashütte with a team of 20 watchmakers should give you a clue.
Most mechanical digitals use gradually rotating hour and minute discs. This is fine, but it makes accurately reading the time a bit of a pain as the discs spend more time being slightly off the minute or hour than on it. The Zeitwerk, though, uses a jumping digital display which is much easier, and more pleasing, to read. It also makes the watchmakers’ lives a whole lot more complicated.
As well as having two discs that look after tens and minutes, the jumping numerals mechanism has a much larger hour ring that’s almost as large as the whole movement. Despite this, all the numerals on the A. Lange & Söhne Zeitwerk Honeygold Lumen are the same size.
This is all very well, but moving the three number discs that make up the display takes far more power than rotating a set of hands. In watch terms, that means you need a V8 of a mainspring to generate the required torque. In this case, it’s actually two V8s stacked on top of each other as the watch has two mainspring barrels. In fact, the cal. L043.9 movement has a 72-hour power reserve. That’s twice the power reserve of its predecessor.
That sort of torque takes some managing. Then, remember how the Zeitwerk’s hour and minute discs snap into place smartly, rather than rotate lazily? To facilitate this, the movement uses a remontoire – almost a watch within a watch – to take that torque and transmit it in a controlled, metered way to the discs. It also prevents the huge twisting force from the mainsprings eventually stripping the teeth off the going train.
Remontoires are lovely things. They are tiny precision power regulators with lots of parts and a huge potential for interesting jewelling and finishes. The Zeitwerk doesn’t disappoint. On its own it features more jewels than Barbara Cartland’s dressing table as well as polished screws and chatons and yet its structure is barely thicker than a paperclip. The balance and escape-wheel cocks are hand-engraved and the escapement bridge is filigreed and straight-grained. Fortunately, you can see all this gorgeousness going on through the Zeitwerk’s exhibition case back.
Take a look at the front of the watch. Spot anything interesting? Yes, there are the three discs, snappily doing their thing. There’s a power reserve too at 12, plus a running seconds at 6. But there are two other things that are worth a look – that time bridge that frames the discs and the smoked sapphire crystal dial.
The black rhodiumed German silver bridge (neither necessarily German nor silver, but a nickel, zinc and copper alloy that’s corrosion-resistant and hard) is very much part of the movement rather than being there just for decoration. That’s why you’ll see a single screw and a single jewel mounted in its top surface.
But take another look. See that smoked crystal dial? A quick scan and you almost miss the translucency. But a proper inspection reveals the layers sitting behind it. When the time changes and the discs move, you can see the whole thing in action. So you get all the interest of watching the movement do its thing as well as the clarity of seeing the time at a glance. Neat design.
The smoking of the crystal is light-permeable enough to allow those numerals not sitting in the open to still receive sufficient UV light to glow in the dark. At night, having carefully poured your glass of whatever-you-fancy, you can turn the lights off and enjoy seeing everything behind the sapphire in action.
Because of the horological cleverness inside the case, setting this Zeitwerk is simple. Altering the minutes, either forward or back, needs nothing more than a pull and twist of the crown at 2. The pusher at 4 is a new addition on the Honeygold Lumen. It changes the hour separately from the minutes, making it even easier to change the time. No need to spin through a whole cycle when the clocks change or you’ve nipped into a new timezone.
Typically, the simplicity of the hour pusher also conceals some smart engineering. When you depress it, absolutely nothing happens; strange, when most watch pushers work on impulse. Release it, though, and the hour changes at a snap. That means the change is completely independent of how little (or how much) effort the wearer uses to press the button. This is because a tiny clutch uncouples the hour ring from the jumping numeral mechanism each time you press the pusher. It also means the mechanism inside the movement can be that bit more delicate.
The case itself is just under 42 mm and cut from Lange’s proprietary 18ct honey gold – the first time it’s been used for a Lumen model. Despite being gold, the alloy used along with a special thermal hardening treatment, means although you won’t want to change the oil on your E500 with your Zeitwerk on your wrist, it’s still hard enough to wear without worrying overly about scratches. Both the power reserve and small seconds hands are also honey gold, as is the strap buckle.
There’s always an appeal to simplicity. When that simplicity comes from an underlying complication that you have to discover for yourself, it’s even more satisfying. The A. Lange & Söhne Zeitwerk Honeygold Lumen is, from the outside, a beautifully made, top-flight watch that’s simple to read and simple to use. But its real appeal comes from the thought, care and craftsmanship that the German brand has put into it. And, just like a serious Q-car, the Zeitwerk feels perfectly confident enough not to shout about it.
Further reading
https://www.alange-soehne.com/
Technical specification
- Model: A. Lange & Söhne Zeitwerk Honeygold Lumen
- Reference: 142.055
- Case: Honeygold (18-carat); diameter 41.9 mm; height 12.6 mm; sapphire crystal to the front and exhibition caseback
- Functions: Hours and minutes with jumping numerals; subsidiary seconds with stop seconds, power-reserve indicator
- Movement: Lange manufacture calibre L043.9; hand-wound movement; frequency 18,000 VpH (2.5Hz); contains 61 jewels; power reserve = 72 hours (when fully wound)
- Strap: Dark brown hand-stitched leather with prong buckle in Honeygold.
- Price: £110,000 (RRP as of 24.10.2021)
- Limited Edition: 200 pieces