WORLDTEMPUS - 15 December 2011
Elizabeth Doerr
Being the first to produce an in-house minute repeater in the famed city of Glashütte is no mean feat. And, interestingly, it was accomplished by the company one would have least expected to see it come from.
Ferdinand Adolph Lange patented a simple quarter repeater in 1866 and in 1873 his son Richard Lange began producing a version with an updated mechanical design utilizing a separate spring barrel and stabilized by a typical Glashütte three-quarter plate. The company made about 700 of these up to 1940 (most before 1914). All other repeaters made in Glashütte were based on ébauches supplied by Audemars Piguet or LeCoultre, which the Le Sentier-based company made especially for Glashütte entrepreneurs (among them A. Lange & Söhne, Julius Assmann, and Dürrstein). These ébauches were described in LeCoultre's sales catalogues as the “genre allemande” (the German type).
Hommage
Returning to hometown Glashütte after an absence of 65 years, the Hommage pays tribute to both this and to the company's founder, Dr. Ernst Kurtz. Kurtz had had the foresight to leave Saxony after World War II before the Allied Forces divided the country, making Glashütte brand Tutima the only one able to continue production in West Germany after East Germany was formed. Fate was therefore kinder to Tutima than to that of other Glashütte brands, and for the last 65 years it has built a reputation for excellent, well designed, reliable pilot's chronographs using Swiss movements encased in Ganderkesee, Germany.
Tutima's Hommage is high horology based on Glashütte's values and tradition with particular attention paid to stability and exquisite finishing as dictated by the town's historical thinkers and Tutima's own founder. The Hommage, a three-handed minute repeater, is powered by 32 mm hand-wound Caliber 800: comprising 550 individual components, it beats at a frequency of 21,600 vph. With a matte, frosted, gold-plated traditional finish and a Glashütte three-quarter plate, this exceptional movement is directly identifiable as a product of it geographical location. The steel repeater parts – every single one of which have been manufactured and tin-polished to perfection in Glashütte – culminate in the two gongs attached to the case for better resonance. Housed in a 43 mm case of solid rose gold or platinum with the choice of a classic or skeletonized dial, this masterpiece is strictly limited to 25 pieces.
GO TO 2011 SELECTION
