Discreet Elegance: A. Lange & Söhne’s New Saxonia Annual Calendar

Words by Tony Wilkes


It’s best described as the Olympics of watchmaking: for one week each year, the entire industry descends on Geneva for Watches and Wonders, the most important event in the fine-watches calendar. Here, the world’s best brands launch their latest novelties, the results of years of tireless work, offering a glimpse into a world usually kept behind closed doors. Like the fashion shows of Paris and Milan, it’s here that that the future of fine watches is set and speculation, unsurprisingly, runs high. It comes as no surprise, then, that one of this year’s highlights came from Germany’s watchmaking Mecca in Saxony—more specifically, from the idyllic Glashütte.


That is A. Lange & Söhne’s Saxonia Annual Calendar. Available in white and pink gold, the watch is built with a new self-winding movement and boasts compact case dimensions and an elegant, timeless design – all underpinned by its German technical finesse. Part of the Saxonia family, the watch embodies the origins of A. Lange & Söhne, uniting the values associated with its home state of Saxony in eastern Germany. Founded by watchmaker Ferdinand Adolph Lange in 1845, the brand laid the foundations for the region’s precision watchmaking industry. Relaunched in 1990 by Lange’s great-grandson, the brand today crafts only a few thousand watches per year, each equipped with movements made exclusively in-house and elaborately assembled by hand. With the seemingly simple Saxonia models, the brand’s watchmakers concentrate on perfecting every detail, from the appliquéd baton hands to its intricate movements – always assembled twice.

It’s this perfection of essentials that defines the Saxonia Annual Calendar’s dial. The result of considerable design effort, its time and date can be easily seen at a glance, while its auxiliary dials show the day of the week and the current month. Look closer, and you’ll see they’re slightly bevelled inward, with circumferential rings crafted with filigreed azurage (wave-like concentric circles) which intensifies the three-dimensional effect of the dial. Its precision moon-phase display features a moon made of 18-karat gold, with a deep-blue coated sky adorned with 428 stars, and won’t need correcting for another 122.6 years.

The beauty of the dial extends to the new self-winding movement within. In contrast to the understated dial, each component of the movement is lavishly finished with surface polishing and hand-engraving, an opulence that has defined Saxon precision watchmaking since the royal court in the 19th century – and it's perfectly visible through the sapphire-crystal caseback.

The new Saxonia Annual Calendar in pink gold

The L207.1 manufacture calibre

The new Saxonia Annual Calendar is designed with two elegant colourways. First, a warm pink gold is paired with a cool-toned grey dial for striking contrast; then, a white gold with a silvery argenté dial for understated impact. The sleekness of the palette is reflected in their modest dimensions: with a 36mm diameter and measuring just 9.8mm high, it slips neatly under a shirt cuff. Yet with a design like this, the discreet Saxonia Annual Calendar is still sure to catch eyes.

In partnership with A. Lange & Söhne

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