A 50-piece platinum edition with a jet-black grand-feu enamel dial and a tourbillon that stops and resets to zero, the 1815 Tourbillon brings quiet drama to Lange’s most classical line.
If you like your thrills on the subtle side, the new 1815 Tourbillon in 950 platinum makes a strong case. Its 39.5 millimetre case, 11.3 millimetres thick, frames a black enamel dial whose depth only reveals itself when light lingers. The Arabic numerals and railway minutes are flush with the glassy surface, and the large aperture at 6 o’clock gives the tourbillon nowhere to hide. The dial is made in-house from the first step to the last, starting with a white gold base, then pigment, multiple firings, and a final surface treatment. Even the circular opening is hand-chamfered, a delicate job on enamel. One dial takes weeks, and more than a hundred individual procedures, to complete.
The theatre inside is equally considered. The manufacture calibre L102.1 is visible through a sapphire caseback, and its traditional architecture reads like a Saxon syllabus. There is an untreated German silver three-quarter plate, screwed gold chatons, and in the centre of the tourbillon a diamond endstone secured by its own chaton, a bright point that catches the eye before you notice the elaborate black polish on the tourbillon bridge and upper cage. Black polish is a hand process on a tin plate with special abrasives until the surface flips from mirror to jet black depending on the viewing angle, a party trick that never gets old.
The complication at 6 o’clock is more than decoration. Lange’s tourbillon stops when you pull the crown, and thanks to the ZERO-RESET mechanism the seconds hand snaps to 12, so you can align the minute hand to a marker. This answers a longstanding irritation in tourbillon ownership, namely that you could admire them, but not always set them to the second. The movement runs at 21,600 vibrations per hour, with a freely oscillating Lange balance spring and a traditional screw balance, and holds 72 hours of power in reserve.
Within the brand’s portfolio, this is the fifth take on the 1815 Tourbillon and the twelfth Lange with an enamel dial. The lineage goes back to 2014, with platinum and pink gold debuts, a Handwerkskunst edition in 2015, and a 2018 platinum model with a white enamel dial. This new release arrives in 2025, limited to 50 watches, with the cool heft of platinum and the graphic punch of black enamel giving it a distinctive presence in the already restrained 1815 family.
There is a touch of polarity here. The generous aperture dominates the lower half of the dial, which some will love for its honesty and others would prefer closed. Either way, the execution is meticulous, and the design remains legible, the numerals crisp against the dark dial.
Collectors will recognise the blend of tradition and incremental innovation that defines modern Lange. As Anthony de Haas, the brand’s product chief, puts it, the watch takes a two-century-old idea for improving rate stability and gives it a contemporary interpretation by letting you stop and zero it on demand. Combine that with the limited run, the enamel dial made entirely in the manufacture, and the visible finishing flourishes, and you have a reference ALS 730.094 that sits comfortably in the core of the brand rather than at its fringes.
The 1815 Tourbillon does not try to surprise with novelty for novelty’s sake. It focuses your attention, slowly, on surfaces, mechanisms, and the quiet satisfaction of aligning a minute hand to the track and watching the seconds jump cleanly to zero.
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