A. Lange and Söhne Lange 1 116.021

The A. Lange & Söhne Lange 1 Time Zone reference 116.021 in 18kt yellow gold with champagne dial presents the manufacture's ingenious dual-time-zone complication in its warmest and most classically appealing material combination. The 41.9mm case provides ample real estate for the complex dial, which features two complete time displays with independent day/night indicators, a city ring for instant time zone identification, the Lange 1's signature outsize date, and a power reserve indicator. Despite this wealth of information, the dial remains remarkably legible -- a testament to the design team's mastery of layout and proportion. Powering this traveler's companion is the caliber L031.1, a hand-wound movement with 72 hours of power reserve. The movement's most clever feature is the ability to adjust the local time in one-hour steps using a pusher at the case side, independently of the home time display. This means the wearer can change time zones without disturbing the reference time at home -- an elegant solution to a practical problem. The movement is finished to A. Lange & Söhne's exacting standards, with every surface hand-decorated and every edge chamfered by a skilled artisan. The yellow gold version of the Lange 1 Time Zone connects this sophisticated travel watch to the warm, traditional aesthetic that defined A. Lange & Söhne's earliest post-reunification timepieces. Reference 116.021 is a watch that would have been equally at home on the wrist of a nineteenth-century Saxon merchant traveling to the Leipzig trade fairs as it is on a modern executive crossing time zones. That sense of timelessness -- of creating objects that transcend their era -- is the essence of what Walter Lange sought to rebuild when he refounded the manufacture in 1990.