Simply stated, enameling is the art of fusing glass to metal at high temperatures. The practice marks one of the oldest artforms in the world, dating back to at least 1300 BCE. Its origins can be found in Greek and Roman civilizations, primarily throughout their jewelry and religious artifacts. In these early days of enameling without modern methods of controlled and measured heating, the biggest challenge was finding ways to melt the glass without melting the metal base. By the last millennium BCE, artisans started to hone the craft, and as enameling became more refined, it in turn became more popular, especially as a more cost-effective way to add color to jewelry and other objects compared to precious stones.
Early Applications in Watchmaking
Despite the early evolution of enamel techniques, its application in watchmaking wouldn’t start taking shape for thousands of years. In the early modern period of the 17th century, French watchmakers became the first to employ enamel on their watch dials. By the second half of the 17th century, Swiss and German watchmakers had adopted the art form. The craft’s initial application in horology was quite basic–crisp white or black dials with contrasting black or white hour markers. Yet, over time, watchmakers have perfected much more intricate and elaborate enameling methods to create breathtaking effects.
Although enamel has been around for thousands of years, the number of highly specialized craftspeople who can execute the technique today remains incredibly small. Plus, even with modern advancements in the materials and execution, the process of enameling remains both lengthy and risky.
It takes several days to make the most basic enamel dial and much longer for more intricate ones. With any enamel dial—whether a single color or an elaborate design—various stages in the manufacturing sequence often have to be repeated multiple times. First and foremost, absolute cleanliness is vital for a flawless finish, so the work has to be carried out in a virtually dust-free environment. In addition, the production process is extremely hard to control. Various coats of the material are applied to gradually build up the desired thickness, and each layer of enamel is fired individually. With every firing, there’s a risk of cracks or bubbles in the material. As a result, the reject rate is very high–up to a dozen dials often have to be made before a perfect one is produced. So, watches with enamel dials are rare and highly valuable.
A. Lange & Söhne’s History of Enamel Dials
Ferdinand Adolph Lange founded his namesake brand in Glashutte, Germany back in 1845, and enamel dials quickly became a part of the Maison’s design language. Most A. Lange & Söhne pocket watches from the 19th and 20th centuries feature white Grand Feu enamel dials. The term “grand feu” is French for “big fire.” This refers to the firing technique in which contemporary enamel is liquefied at temperatures of at least 800°C to permanently bond the material to its metal base.
By the mid-20th century, A. Lange & Söhne felt the impact of WWII. At the end of the war, Glashutte was bombed, destroying the Maison’s facilities. Soon after, all that was left of the brand’s machinery and archives was seized by Soviet forces occupying the area. It wouldn’t be until the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 that the Lange family would be able to start picking up the pieces and rebuilding. By 1994, A. Lange & Söhne was reborn and began its journey to becoming a fully integrated manufacture, meaning the brand would develop, produce, finish, and assemble all its watches in-house at the Glashutte base without outsourcing any of the crucial steps to third-party suppliers. However, this is no small feat and would take time.
New Leadership, New Evolution
By 2004, the Maison had tapped Anthony de Haas as its Director of Product Development, and he would become pivotal to bringing every facet of the watchmaking process under A. Lange & Söhne’s roof, including the art of enamel. “I remember going through the archives when I started with the brand, and I found the Langematik Anniversary from the year 2000,” de Haas recalls. “This model has a gorgeous enamel dial, and I thought, ‘wow, this is cool–it would be great to make a watch like this in-house.’”
Patience was key for de Haas and his team. In 2009, he oversaw the production of his first enamel piece—the Richard Lange “Pour le Merite”—but he hadn’t achieved his goal of bringing the craft in-house yet. “This model really embodies the ultimate Lange watch,” de Haas explains. “It’s a watch for the connoisseur–a real collector who has the knowledge of every aspect of watchmaking from the design to the mechanics. You have this beautiful enamel dial that’s quite simple, discreet, very classic, but you flip it over and see this super complicated fusion chain movement through the exhibition caseback. I was so proud of this watch,” he confesses, “but at the same time, I thought to myself as a developer, this is such a pity we didn’t make the whole thing in-house.”
The Benefits of a Fully-Integrated Manufacture
A year later, the stars finally aligned for A. Lange & Söhne and de Haas. An artisan from the Maison’s engraving department who had been with the company for nearly a decade approached de Haas for a meeting. “My door is always open,” he shares, “I love new ideas, and this is exactly what she brought me–these wild renderings for different ways we could use engraving–a Lange 1 with flowers, a perpetual calendar depicting the different seasons. At first, I thought, this is not Lange, this doesn’t fit in our catalog,” de Haas confesses,” But I slept on it, and the next day I said, why not create a new chapter in our catalog? So, that gave birth to our Handwerkskunst models and ultimately, our first in-house enamel timepiece with a black dial in 2014, the Lange 1 Tourbillon Handwerkskunst. Yes, we started with the most difficult color of enamel first!” he adds. “This was also the birth of a new team–our enameling department.”
Since then, that enameling department has grown with a small but mighty group of experts in the craft as well as exclusively sourced colors and custom-made machinery. With these proprietary materials, tools, and in-house developed enameling processes and techniques, the workshop is top secret and has never been opened to individuals outside the Maison.
An Enduring Part of the Catalog
A model that perfectly exemplifies A. Lange & Söhne’s commitment to the craft of enameling came in 2017: the 1815 Rattrapante Perpetual Calendar Handwerkskunst. Here, the art form spans the dial, combining enamel and engraving for the first time, with relief-engraved stars decorating the face and moonphase topped with an exclusive blue transparent enamel. However, the real showpiece is on the reverse. Decorating the caseback is a medallion featuring a relief and tremblage engraving of Luna (the goddess of the moon) accompanied by her characteristic gossamer veil, crescent diadem, and torch surrounded by a contrasting star and cloud relief finished in the same blue enamel.
Enamel remains a core focus of A. Lange & Söhne in recent years, with six new enamel additions appearing in the catalog in the past seven years. The most recent came earlier this year as one of the Maison’s novelties presented at the annual Watches & Wonders showcase. The Minute Repeater Perpetual goes back to the brand’s origins with a pristinely executed black enamel dial giving way to the mechanical complexity of both a minute repeater and perpetual calendar. We’ll be eagerly awaiting the next enamel edition—I know I would personally love to see another design like the 1815 Rattrapante Perpetual Calendar Handwerkskunst that incorporates other art forms like engraving and a bolder use of color.
