At Salon QP in London (2-4 November 2017), Lang & Heyne were present with some watches that included this piece, the Georg watch modified with an unusual interpretation of the crown. It is a bespoke piece made for a customer who has difficulties with normal crowns, and so they engineered this new pattern that combines the conventional crown with a crank. When it is not in use, the crank lies horizontal and the crown is screwed into a threaded recess on the caseband. When you want to use the crown, you just unscrew it from its resting position, and then you can wind the watch or set the time, crank-handle style.

The watch itself is the same Georg that I described in an earlier post, with its in-house Calibre VIII, hand-wound with 55 hours power reserve. The balance runs at 18,000 vibrations per hour, 2.5 Hertz. There are 19 bearing rubies and one diamond used as the endstone for the balance staff – a feature of all Lang & Heyne movements. The normal Lang & Heyne Georg costs about €28,000 in white gold. They didn’t tell me how much this bespoke piece cost, “a small increase.” It’s an example of what is becoming a progressively more important theme in watchmaking, the attraction of niche brands who have no problem about customizing their watches to create a unique product. Read more at the Lang & Heyne website.