The present watch is part of a small series of only 62 quarter repeating chronograph watches made by A. Lange & Söhne, the series however comprising models with and without minute register, yellow or pink gold cases of different shapes, rendering the individual timepieces extremely rare. No. 31'842 and its Professor Graff case with custom-made initials and engraving can be considered unique.
According to Martin Huber, Die Lange Liste, p. 190, it was sold in 1894 for 1,550 Reichsmark, 1A quality movement with swan neck regulator, pink gold hunter case, weight 120.5 grams.
A. Lange & Söhne produced a variety of different cases but the so-called Professor Graff cases were the most elaborate and expensive version.
The decoration of these cases was designed by Professor Carl Ludwig Graff (1844-1906), Privy Councillor to the Court, Director of the Royal Arts and Crafts Museum for Saxony, becoming Professor in 1879. The designs were mostly inspired from Renaissance architecture (arches with floral patterns) and literature (courting birds, ram's heads, cornucopia with fruits, ribbons, wine leaves).
The large and heavy-gauge pink gold and enamel Professor Graff case of the present watch is finely engraved with a scallop, gold and seashell pattern, the back with dragons in a black enamel champlevé frame surrounding a blank cartouche engraved “Johannifest 1894”, raised initials to the front.
Watch no. 31’842 furthermore displays other features associated with A. Lange & Söhne’s highest grade watches, notably the 1st Quality "1A” quarter repeating movement with gold escapement and diamond endstone and a chronograph with 30 minutes register.
A. Lange & Söhne, Glashütte bei Dresden
For over 150 years, watches made by A. Lange & Söhne were and still are among the most coveted timepieces in the world. The success story of the celebrated dynasty started with Ferdinand Adolph Lange, born in Dresden on 18 February 1815. After the divorce of his parents, he found a new home with a merchant family that gave the intelligent young man a good education. At the age of 15, while he was still attending the polytechnic school in Dresden, he began training as an apprentice with the celebrated master watchmaker J. C. Friedrich Gutkäs.
In 1835, Adolph Lange completed his apprenticeship with honours and continued as Gutkäs' employee for two more years before deepening his skills as a journeyman, working with Europe's most respected chronometer makers, notably Winnerl in Paris. After his return to Dresden in 1841, Lange became a co-owner of and the driving force behind Gutkäs' manufactory, constructing amongst others the celebrated five-minute clock in Dresden's Semper Opera.
Besides his dedication to horological perfection, Adolph Lange was a person of uncommon social sensitivity. The growing level of destitution in the Ore Mountains ultimately urged him to leave his privileged position in Dresden; in 1845, armed with numerous visions and his journey and workbook, he set out for the poverty-stricken town of Glashütte in order to establish the Saxon precision watchmaking industry. In December 1845, with the financial help of the Saxon government, Lange started his own manufacture with his friend Adolf Schneider and fifteen apprentices, followed by 'A. Lange & Söhne' in association with his sons Richard and Friedrich Emil in 1868.
Lange possessed an extended range of knowledge in different directions; his eminent talents did not remain unnoticed, and he was very early elected mayor in his little town. His life was one of activity and he introduced many essential innovations in the manufacturing of watches and chronometry. The horological school at Glashütte, though opened only two years after his dead, was a natural sequence of his thirty years' endeavor to resuscitate watch making in Germany. His shop had been a training school from the first day.
Lange watches are renowned for their variety of rare technical constructions and quality and offer everything from an early pin lever watch handmade by Adolph Lange up to tourbillons and highly complicated astronomical repeating watches.