An A. Lange & Söhne Saxonia Thin, With Blue ‘Gold Flux’ Dial

Last week for A Watch A Week, we took a look at a Lange 1815 Rattrapante Perpetual, which is one of the most complicated watches Lange has ever made. This week, we’re going to take a look at a variation on the simplest watch that Lange makes: the Saxonia Thin, and specifically the version with the blue gold flux dial.

The Saxonia Thin debuted in 2011 and since then, it has been made in three different case sizes – 37mm, 39mm, and 40mm – and all models have used the extra flat Lange caliber L093.1, which is a 28mm x 2.9mm hand-wound movement, with a 72 hour power reserve, running at the somewhat unusual rate (for a non-tourbillon watch) of 21,600 vph. The blue gold flux dial version in white gold was the first Saxonia thin model to use that dial material, and it was followed by a white gold and black gold flux dial in 2021; the white gold model with blue gold flux dial is still in the current catalog. The term “gold flux” used by Lange may present a little bit of confusion at first – the material is more commonly called aventurine, or aventurine glass, which is a type of glass supposedly invented by accident (“a ventura” meaning “by chance”) at the famous Murano glassworks in Vienna, sometime in the 18th century.

The confusion is increased by the fact that there is also a naturally occurring mineral with the same name, which was, as if things weren’t murky enough already, apparently named for its resemblance to the glass (you’d think it would be the other way around). The material is a popular dial option among collectors, although it presents some technical challenges when used for dials, thanks to the relative fragility of the material. It is, however, like fired enamel and porcelain, basically completely stable over time and it has a depth and glossy richness that makes it very visually compelling, as well as making it a real departure from Lange’s generally rather sober approach to dial design.

The dial of the Saxonia Thin blue gold flux watch resembles nothing so much as a field of stars at night (and in fact, Lange has exploited that resemblance to great effect in the Little Lange I Moonphase). Although the dial is relatively simple, Lange’s paid its characteristic close attention to detail in both the hands and indexes, which are elegantly elongated and which contrast, in their polish and three dimensionality, very well with the aventurine glass around them.

As is always the case with Lange, the star of the show is really the movment (although in this case I think the dial gives the movement some pretty stiff competition).

The Lange caliber L093.1 is something of an anomaly in the world of extra flat movements. Generally speaking watchmaking in Glashütte with very few exceptions (one of which is, arguably, the flying tourbillon) was not historically, and is not today, oriented around making very flat watches; in this it has a close kinship to traditional British watchmaking, which emphasized sturdiness, rigidity, and stability in construction and which, like Glashütte watchmaking, tended to prefer the 3/4 plate to the full bridge construction typical of Swiss watchmaking. There are a number of features characteristic of the thinnest traditionally constructed ultra thin movments, including the use of a hanging mainspring barrel (that is to say, the mainspring barrel has no upper bridge) and modifications to the escapement geometry, which are absent in the L093.1, although the L093.1 also has a much longer power reserve than is typical of extra flat and ultra thin movements. In fact, the L093.1 bears more than a slight resemblance to Lange pocket watch movements from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Many years ago, Walt Odets, who’s the founding father of the technical internet watch review, described the details of Lange movements as almost “willfully anachronistic” and there seems little doubt that a Lange watchmaker from the 1920s would instantly recognize the L093.1 as a Lange movement, even without the engraving. While Lange’s complications are admirable for their three-dimensionality, the L093.1 is full of wonderful small details that can be seen for what they are without the distractions of dozens of components. The ratchet wheel and crown wheel teeth are beautifully polished, and the train wheel jewels are set into gold chatons held in place by heat blued steel screws – chatons were historically used in watchmaking in order to allow easier placement, and replacement of, jewels in case one was damaged; they have been superseded by pressed-in jewels in modern watchmaking but they remain an essential defining detail of Lange watches.

The cap jewel on the escape wheel pivot is also an anachronism but one that adds richness to the watch, and the lever sits under its own bridge, which is shaped in such a way as to be visually pleasing, and to also allow full visibility of the escape wheel teeth interacting with the lever pallet jewels.

The movement plate under the balance cock, as well as under the click for the ratchet wheel, is decorated with perlage, and under magnification the quality of the steel work, as well as of the balance cock engraving, really speaks for itself. The whiplash spring and index for the mobile stud carrier are perfectly black polished, and the stud carrier is straight grained and beveled. The balance has rim screws, only four of which are actually functional; these are used to adjust the rate of the watch (the Saxonia Thin’s caliber L093.1 uses a freesprung balance, a fact easy to miss as you might mistake the whiplash spring and its adjusting screw for identical ones used for regulators; here, they are used to make fine adjustments to eliminate beat error (in simple terms, to ensure that each tick and tock are of the same duration). The other screws are decorative in nature and if you wanted to split hairs, you could object to them on the grounds of the fact that they produce aerodynamic turbulence, but so much of the spirit of this watch has to do with the theater of traditional German watchmaking that, along with the engraved balance cock and those screwed in chatons, I have never really found them bothersome.

The Lange Saxonia Thin, in this or any of its other variants, is a great example of how much you can tell about a company from its simplest watches. High complications have their charms (especially, if you ask me, the minute repeater) but with a simple watch you can really see where a watchmaking company’s collective head is at when it comes to quality. Lange still produces watches on a very small scale for a modern luxury watch brand, putting out around four and a half to five and a half thousand watches per year (compared to 50,000 at AP and 70,000 or so at Patek) and that small output (plus, maybe, the relatively distraction-free environment of Glashütte where, based on the visits I’ve made, you lead a pretty quiet life) still seems to mean what it did when Lange launched its first post-reunification collection in 1994: that there’s time to spend on sweating the small stuff.

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