When the Saxonia automatic was first unveiled, it was a much welcome respite from an industry with timepieces so saturated with the latest materials and/or high complications. In fact, our very own Lord Marbury went so far as to applaud the Manufacture from Glashutte on returning watches back to their raison d’etre.

A. Lange & Sohne Saxonia Automatic Outsize Date

Debuting at Watches and Wonders 2013, the Saxonia Automatic Outsize Date from A. Lange & Söhne is a re-emphasis of those traditions that make them as one PuristS commentator put it “the venerable King-father of the watchmaking industry”. True, Lange does not quite create  ’crazy’ timepieces like the other manufactures have been flogging but what they have done as Templars to horology, is uphold the purity and values of watchmaking with smoothly integrated, double aperture large dates into an elegant solid silver dial, giving it its namesake “Outsize Date” moniker first seen previously in the Lange 1 model.

Indeed, while almost everyone else has jumped onto the “bigger is better” bandwagon, Lange stands resolute, with their 37mm pink gold offering powered by their renown Sax-0-Mat manufacture calibre a name derived from the Latin for Saxony, Zero for the innovative Zero-reset mechanism which sets the seconds hand to 12 o’clock instantly when the crown is pulled and automatic for, obviously, automatic winding via high efficiency rotor with platinum centrifugal mass and embossed 21 carat gold dual direction winding with reduction gear.

The sapphire-crystal exhibition caseback certainly exhibits the wondrously hand finished movement with classic screw balance escapement, hand-engraved balance cock and whiplash precision index adjuster.