BANGKOK – Ensconced in an armchair in a suite at the Rosewood Hotel in Bangkok, the director of product development of luxury watchmaker A. Lange & Sohne says: “We know exactly what we are going to do in the next five years.”

Asked for hints on what is to come, Mr Anthony de Haas quips: “Precious metal, a leather strap and we will probably have a folding buckle.”

His lips are sealed.

“They say, ‘Give Tony alcohol and maybe he’ll start talking,’” he adds. “Actually, that’s true, but I will be talking so much nonsense, you won’t know what’s true and what’s not. So I’m never worried.”

It is 5pm on a Thursday. The wisecracking Dutchman is not inebriated, but there is giddy enthusiasm in his voice as he introduces the brand’s latest watch: the Zeitwerk Minute Repeater Honeygold. 

Limited to 30 pieces and costing an eye-popping €500,000 (S$722,500), the new timepiece is a blockbuster release by the coveted German watchmaker.

The Zeitwerk Minute Repeater debuted in 2015, crafted in platinum, and immediately caused a stir. 

Combining a jumping numerals display for hours and minutes with a decimal minute repeater, the ground-breaking watch not only allows wearers to hear the time chime, but also to see the mechanical digital time display for hours and minutes.

Holding the watch in his hand, Mr de Haas says the numeral display’s jumping action during the chiming sequence is delayed until the chimes conclude.

“The watch is not stopping. Only the indication is delayed, because the second hand continues,” he says.

Traditional minute repeaters chime the time in hours, quarter hours and minutes past the quarter hour. However, the decimal repeater chimes the hours, the intervals of 10 minutes past the hour, and the remaining minutes after the last full 10-minute interval.

He sets the watch to 12:59 to get “the most amount of chiming” – 12 low-pitched gong strikes, five high-pitched strikes and then another nine high-pitched strikes.

Mr de Haas attributes the strikes’ clarity to Honeygold, which was developed in 2010 and is almost twice as hard as regular gold.

“(With) platinum, it was very pure, very crisp,” he says of the 2015 model.

He adds that the 2020 white gold version is louder, more aggressive and straightforward. “Honeygold has the crispness and purity from platinum, but has more warmth.

“I flew in from Dubai yesterday, where we had an event. There was a client who had the platinum minute repeater, but when he heard the Honeygold version, he said he wanted it too. He’s on the list – we have only 30 pieces.” 

Mr de Haas says he has always wanted to make a minute repeater with the gold alloy “because it’s cool and nobody has it”.

The material, however, will be reserved for exclusive models. Its stiffness and density make it tricky to work with, and it wears out watchmaking tools six times faster than other materials.

He says it is especially challenging to fashion minute repeater cases with Honeygold, because they are built differently from standard watches “with chambers and stuff like that”.

An accomplished drummer and former studio musician – his music hero is drummer Cesar Zuiderwijk from Dutch rock band Golden Earring – Mr de Haas does not find it ironic that his job requires him to assess the melodic nuances of different metals.

He has 17 snare drums, fashioned from different materials such as copper and steel, so he knows his metals well.

It helps that Mr de Haas – who joined Lange in 2004 – also worked in the chiming watches department of Audemars Piguet.

“I was already familiar with each material sounding different,” he says.

Lodged in the upper echelons of haute horology, A. Lange & Sohne hand-makes only a few thousand pieces a year.

As director of product development, one of Mr de Haas’ key roles is to make sure the brand understands its identity and stays close to its heritage.

The watchmaker has six watch families, each with its own design logic and aesthetics.

The German powerhouse, Mr de Haas says, does not develop or make watches to cater to specific groups.

“Ideas come from inside (the development department) and we brief marketing what we’re going to do. That doesn’t come from arrogance that we know better.

“We learn from feedback from the market, we filter, but we have to translate that into our DNA while still pushing boundaries.”

Some A. Lange & Sohne timepieces made from Honeygold

Since 2010, A. Lange & Sohne has crafted 13 models with cases fashioned from its proprietary Honeygold, a gold alloy characterised by its hardness and warm glow.

Lange 1 Tourbillon 165 Years – Homage to F. A. Lange (2010)

This anniversary edition of the Lange 1 Tourbillon incorporates Lange’s stop-seconds mechanism, visible through the dial’s outsize date glass ring, and highlights a mirror-polished Honeygold tourbillon bar within the dial.

Lange Tourbillon “Pour le Merite” Handwerkskunst (2011)

This piece boasts fusee-and-chain transmissions, a patented stop-seconds mechanism and a tourbillon showcased through a regulator dial aperture. The hour dial reveals the tourbillon by incorporating a cutaway section for an extended view.

Lange 1 Time Zone Honeygold (2016)

A special October 2016 release, this timepiece’s clear dial displays home time and a second time zone at a glance.

Zeitwerk Decimal Strike Honeygold (2017)

Launched in 2009, the Zeitwerk transformed time-telling through a mechanical jumping numerals display. The 2017 model employs two differently tuned gongs to audibly indicate full hours and 10-minute intervals, with visible steel hammers and tremblage engraving on the dial.