Pre-SIHH: 3 New Watches from Panerai, Lange, & Jaeger-LeCoultre


Jaeger-LeCoultre Grande Reverso Ultra-Thin 1931- Chocolate dialGeneva’s SIHH watch fair is only a month away, and the luxury watch brands exhibiting there continue to offer sneak peeks at several of their new timepieces set to debut in 2014. This week we take a look at three new watches from Panerai, Jaeger-LeCoultre, and A. Lange & Söhne.

The Panerai Luminor 1950 Left-Handed 3 Days – 47 MM (Ref. PAM00557), with its winding crown and patented crown protection device positioned at 9 0’clock on the left side of the case, recalls some of Panerai’s earliest models created for Italian naval commandos of the 1930s and 1940s. These military divers used to wear several wrist instruments at once, including compasses and depth gauges, and often preferred to wear the watch on their right wrist. The modern version of this vintage Panerai watch has a cusped caseband that distinguishes it from the traditional Luminor 1950 case and, in the historical models, represented the transition between the Radiomir and Luminor case styles. Another nod to the early Luminors is the crystal, which is made of plexiglas rather then sapphire. The 47-mm case is made of stainless steel and water-resistant to 100 meters; the black dial features Panerai’s famed “sandwich” construction of two superimposed plates enclosing a layer of Super-LumiNova; and the movement, Panerai’s in-house, manual-wind P.3000, holds a three-day power reserve in its two spring barrels. The watch comes on a natural, untreated leather strap with a brushed steel buckle inspired by the historical model’s, along with a replacement strap made of rubber.

Panerai PAM_557 - front

Panerai PAM 557 - back
Jaeger-LeCoultre introduces the latest in its series of tribute pieces commemorating the original 1931 Reverso watch, the Grande Reverso Ultra Thin Tribute to 1931. Following up on the red-dialed version of 2012, and last year’s blue-dialed version, the 2014 model has a chocolate brown dial. Like its predecessors, it has the famous Art-Deco influenced rectangular Reverso case, here in rose gold. The dial has a single golden numeral at 12 o’clock and baton-shaped hour markers. The gold-plated hour and minute hands have a distinctive dagger shape, and the small-seconds subdial at 6 o’clock echoes the rectangular shape of the case. The historical “Reverso” logo (sans “Jaeger-LeCoultre”) adorns the dial, as it does in the other Tribute to 1931 watches. The swiveling case has contemporary dimensions of 46.8 x 27. mm, but a thickness of only 7.3 mm. The movement, JLC’s manufacture Caliber 822/2, is only 2.95 mm thick. The watch comes on a chestnut brown alligator strap, made in the famed Casa Fagliona leather workshop in Buenos Aires, with a rose-gold pin buckle.

Jaeger-LeCoultre Grande Reverso Ultra Thin 1931 - Chocolate dial

Germany’s A. Lange & Sohne unveils its newest Grand Lange 1 watch, the Grand Lange 1 Moon Phase, which devotes prominent space on its dial for a realistically rendered and ultra-accurate moon-phase complication. The moon-phase disk, which features a patented coating process, is connected to the watch’s hour-wheel continuum, meaning it is in constant motion, just like the moon itself. According to Lange, the time that elapses between each new moon is accurate to 99.9978 percent, substantially more precise than that of most other moon-phase watches. Assuming the watch runs continuously, the display need only be corrected once every 122.6 years (though there is an easy-to-use push-piece corrector in the case flank between 7 and 8 o’clock just in case one needs to re-adjust it before then).

The solid gold lunar disk moves across a deep-blue field with more than 300 laser-cut stars of various sizes, approximating the look of a night sky. The movement, Lange’s manual-wound Caliber L095.3, is only 4.5 mm thick and stores an impressive power reserve of 72 hours in a single mainspring barrel. Like other Lange calibers, it features numerous decorative finishes as well as a three-quarter plate and bridges made of German silver. The case is 41 mm in diameter and available in yellow gold, rose gold, or platinum.

A. Lange & Sohne Grand Lange 1 Moon Phase watch
Lange Grand Lange 1 Moon-Phase caliber
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