A new Cabaret Tourbillon Honeygold is joining the A. Lange & Söhne family today.
A. Lange & Söhne unveiled the new Cabaret Tourbillon Honeygold today at the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa D’Este. The watch is crafted of Lange’s proprietary Honeygold and is powered by the manually wound in-house caliber L042.1 stop seconds tourbillon. When the caliber L042.1 was introduced in 2008, also in a Cabaret watch, it was the world’s first stop seconds tourbillon movement. Since 2008, the brand has included a stop seconds tourbillon function in several other watch models. Today, the L042.1 is returning to its roots in the new Cabaret.
The Concorso d’Eleganza Villa D’Este is an annual event that takes place on the shores of Italy’s Lake Como. A. Lange & Söhne has been involved as a partner since 2012. Introducing a watch at an automobile concours may not seem like a logical choice at first glance. But it makes perfect sense for the brand, A. Lange & Söhne’s CEO, Wilhelm Schmid, said in a previous interview with Superfluity. “I believe that if somebody is attracted by a mechanical art on wheels, it’s probably a lot easier to introduce them to mechanical art on the wrist. We see this as a common denominator when we talk to people from the car world.”
All in the Details
There’s no doubt that the new Cabaret Tourbillon Honeygold is mechanical art inside and out. The watch’s dial is an extraordinary example of the brand’s exacting attention to detail. It is made of a single piece of black-rhodiumed honeygold. The dial’s highly polished honey gold frames, scales and A. Lange & Söhne are carved in relief at a height of .15 millimeters. “The precise detailing of all angles and edges sets a formidable challenge even to the most experienced finishers,” according to the brand. Once the dial has been black-rhodiumed, the raised gold elements are hand polished. After the polishing, the gold Roman numerals, hour markers and frames for the date are integrated into the dial. In all, the dial making process takes several weeks to complete.
A. Lange & Söhne first launched the rectangular shaped Cabaret timepiece in 1997. The Cabaret case is “a distinctive design which includes the typical lug shape of the Lange models,” said Anthony de Haas, director of product development at A. Lange & Söhne. Günter Blümlein, who partnered with Walter Lange (founder Walter Lange’s great-grandson), to revive the brand in 1990, gave a clear design directive for the Cabaret. He “set the challenge of developing a rectangular watch that is pure Lange,” de Haas said, “resulting in the first CABARET, which was introduced in 1997.”
In the Black
The Cabaret Tourbillon Honeygold’s tourbillon is visible through an aperture at 6 o’clock. Its upper tourbillon bridge and the top side of the cage are painstakingly black polished. The technique creates a surface that has a jet-black sheen and reflects light like a mirror from a certain angle.
The Cabaret Tourbillon Honeygold’s hand crafted movement has 370 parts and is visible through its sapphire crystal case back. Like all Lange movements, it is assembled at least twice to ensure the highest quality and precision. While the Cabaret is no longer being produced as a collection, A. Lange & Söhne has brought it back in special limited editions in the ensuing years. And the new Cabaret’s case design remains true to the original. “The case construction is the same. The case actually consists of four parts: the glass ring, the bezel, the middle section and the case back,” de Haas explained. Prior to the Cabaret Tourbillon Honeygold, the most recent edition was the Cabaret Tourbillon Handwerkskunst, which debuted in 2021. The Cabaret Tourbillon Honeygold’s case measures 29.5 by 39.2 millimeters, with a height of 10.3 millimeters. The watch will be produced in a limited edition of 50 individually numbered pieces. It is equipped with a dark brown alligator strap with a honeygold prong buckle.