A. Lange & Söhne Cabaret Tourbillon Honeygold Watch
For two centuries after Abraham-Louis Breguet invented the tourbillon in 1801, stopping its rotating cage was considered mechanically off-limits. A. Lange & Söhne changed that in 2008 with a patented arresting spring that halts the balance wheel the moment the crown is pulled, making the Cabaret Tourbillon the first wristwatch you could set to the exact second. Now it returns as a 50-piece limited edition in Lange's proprietary Honeygold, an 18k alloy harder than conventional gold and exclusive to the Saxon manufacture, housed in a 29.5 by 39.2mm rectangular case. The manually wound movement was built to match those proportions exactly, its tourbillon cage weighing roughly a quarter gram, with five days of power reserve from a twin mainspring barrel. The dial is Honeygold too, three machined sections black-rhodiumed then hand-polished back until the raised surfaces re-emerge warm against the dark ground. Running seconds at 9, power reserve at 3, tourbillon at 6. Dark brown alligator strap. The 18th Lange watch in Honeygold, introduced at the Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este on the shores of Lake Como.
