There are watches that tell time, and then there are watches that remind you why time matters. A. Lange & Söhne’s Minute Repeater Perpetual, crafted in platinum and limited to just 50 pieces, belongs firmly in the latter camp. This is not about novelty. This is about mastery.
From the outside, it carries the quiet authority we’ve come to expect from the Saxonia line, clean Roman numerals, a subdued enamel dial in deep black, and Lange’s unmistakable outsize date at 12. But beneath that calm surface lies a machine of staggering complexity: 640 components working in harmony, all brought to life by the manually wound L122.2 calibre.
The minute repeater is the soul of this watch. Activate the discreet slide on the left side of the case, and the time is chimed with a precision and clarity that borders on the poetic. Low tones mark the hour, a rich double chime for the quarters, and sharp, clean strikes count the minutes. The gongs are hand-tuned. The hammers black-polished to perfection. The sound is engineered, not just to be heard, but to be felt.
But this is no one-trick complication. The perpetual calendar is just as exacting, a mechanism that accounts for leap years, tracks day, date, month, and moonphase, and won’t need adjustment until 2100. The moonphase alone is accurate to within a single day every 122.6 years. A single corrector advances the entire calendar display, because of course it does. That’s the Lange way: deeply technical, effortlessly refined.
Flip the watch over and you’re met with a visual symphony. German silver bridges. Screwed gold chatons. A freehand-engraved balance cock. And two gleaming gongs that arc around the movement like drawn bows, waiting to release their note. The centrifugal governor spins silently at over 2,000 rpm, ensuring a perfect cadence to each chime.
This isn’t a watch for daily wear. It’s a watch for a lifetime, and beyond. A mechanical echo of time, crafted not just to track the hours, but to honor them.
Read more about watches here.