Let us introduce you to Chronoswiss watches, a reasonably young yet masterful Swiss watch brand that is taking over the luxury industry. Founded by “the man with the tic”, Chronoswiss is the child of watchmaker Gerd Rudiger Lang who started his career as an apprentice at TAG Heuer in 1964. It was here that he witnessed the joint development of the first automatic chronograph with Breitling and nurtured his passion for wristwatches with a time-stop function.
In 1982, Gerd Rudiger Lang made the brave decision to leave Heuer and found his own watchmaking factory in Munich. This was an incredibly brave and risky decision at the time since there was a huge disturbance in the mechanical watch industry during the 1980’s with the beginning of the quartz age. Nevertheless, Lang went ahead and named the company Chronoswiss with “chronos” meaning time in Greek and “swiss” for Swiss watchmaking.
Since its founding, Chronoswiss has been behind some of the great watch innovations in history including the “Regulateur” hand-wound wristwatch, the first standard wristwatch with regulator dial, the “Kairos Chronograph”, the first automatic chronograph with decentralized hour and minute display and the “Delphis”, the first wristwatch ever to combine a unique system of analogue, digital and retrograde displays.
Today, Chronoswiss watches epitomise the true meaning of traditional Swiss craftsmanship with only Swiss made components being used to make each Chronoswiss watch. Every breathtaking model that is released continues to represent the brand’s passion for technical precision and their love of mechanical movements and small delicate details. From the royal craft of guilloching to the fine detailing of enamelling, Chronoswiss aren’t afraid to take the complicated route to get only the best in luxury watch design.
It isn’t only about appearance with Chronoswiss watches either, with many of their exceptional releases boasting exclusive manufacture movements that have been made in-house by the brand themselves. While they were headquartered in Munich, Chronoswiss had use of many stock movements from manufacturers like Marvin and Enicar, but in 1990, they took the plunge and released their very first manufacture movement with the world premiere of the Régulateur Automatique watch and the calibre C.122. The C.122 Chronoswiss movement is still used in many Chronoswiss watches today including one of our favourites: the Regulator Manufacture CH-1243.1 watch.
In 2012, Chronoswiss moved their headquarters to Switzerland where they could easily access the best materials and components for each of their designs. The Chronoswiss watch collections that you see today tailor to almost every personality type with the Chronoswiss Sirius collection perfectly capturing the brand’s heritage with each model boasting the characteristic onion style crown and semi-fluted bezel found on past Chronoswiss watches. Meanwhile the Chronoswiss Timemaster collection brings a contemporary aesthetic to the table with large tachymeter bezels and sporty dials inspired by motor racing.
No matter what Chronoswiss watch collection you are drawn to, you can be certain that real craftsmanship and centuries old traditions have gone into making them. Chronoswiss are one of only a few luxury watch manufacturers that have genuinely preserved the art of watchmaking and we couldn’t be more excited to start reviewing more of them on Horologii! For more information on Chronoswiss watches and where to find the full collections to purchase your own, click here.
