early Lange watches in the U.S.

[pwrudy]

Hello, I am a PW collector from Germany, and I really admire what you all are
discussing so learnedly in this forum.
A week ago, a german collector doing serious research on the birth of the Glashütte watch
companies (esp. the firm of A. Lange & Söhne) approached me with the
following request:
In the early years of this company (official date 1845 until about 1871), many movements were sent
uncased to the U.S. and cased in the country (e.g. CWS= Charles William Schumann, NY).
Does anyone have any pictures of such movements or watches available (ser # below
5000)?
Whom do I have to ask? Of course, the owner remains anonymous, I just need the
picture.
Perhaps someone could give me a hint to address the right people or websites.
Thank you so much
Rudolf

[pwrudy]

Hello, I am a PW collector from Germany, and I really admire what you all are
discussing so learnedly in this forum.
A week ago, a german collector doing serious research on the birth of the Glashütte watch
companies (esp. the firm of A. Lange & Söhne) approached me with the
following request:
In the early years of this company (official date 1845 until about 1871), many movements were sent
uncased to the U.S. and cased in the country (e.g. CWS= Charles William Schumann, NY).
Does anyone have any pictures of such movements or watches available (ser # below
5000)?
Whom do I have to ask? Of course, the owner remains anonymous, I just need the
picture.
Perhaps someone could give me a hint to address the right people or websites.
Thank you so much
Rudolf

[Jeff Hess]

Hi,
I sold an incredible one in the three digit range I think to one of our own members recently. I did a lot of reserchon it and I am sure the present owner ahs done a lot more!

I am sure he would share..

Hold your breath......it's a winner!

Jeff Hess

JPH

[Jerry Treiman]

If you haven't seen it, you should look at the book "F.A. Lange and Glashutte" by Gerrit Nijssen [1978]. In a quick glance I see that he shows #3854 made for Samuel Hammond & Co, New York and briefly mentions the American cased watches.

[pwrudy]

Dear Jeff,
your reply sounds very promising and I am very thankful but I still do not know how to contact this person. He can do it privately, of course, if he wants to remain anonymous.

Jerry, thanks for the hint, I looked it up (I have this book of Gerrit Nijsen) and it's exactly the thing I need. Tom McIntyre has sent a note to Gerrit Nijsen, so I am very curious what will be his reply.

Thanks to you all!! :smile:

[Jeff Hess]

Tom is your man!

He has an extraordinarly rare one!

JPH

[Tom McIntyre]

Jeff, I was confused by the Lange reference. I think this watch was probably made by Grossman. As I told Rudy I also have had some English examples of Lange private label watches from the early period. I would like to know more about what the various players in Glasshutte contributed to the overall mix of output.

I think Gerrit and some of the other MIT group have a couple of Gutkaes and Lange movements, but they may not be cased.

Click on this picture for the web page on the Grossman.

http://www.awco.org/European/Grossman/movement_small.jpg (http://www.awco.org/European/Grossman/grossman.htm)

Tom McIntyre
NAWCC 2nd VP Candidate
Tommy the JOAT's Web (http://www.AWCo.org)

[Hans Dahlke]

Tom,

you may want to check out the book by Reinhard Meis, "A. Lange & Soehne..." from the NAWCC library. Even though it is written in German there are lots of pictures etc.

If you want an early Lange you need to look for one that is signed Gutkaes & Lange. Meis also mentions the other Glashuette watchmakers.

[Greg Davis]

As an aside, I just finished reading one of the 1976 copies of the Bulletin in which the topic of the watch industry in Glashutte was covered. The entire lineage of the Lange company was listed, along with the contributions of the Assmans, Gruen, and a couple of others. If anyone is interested, I can provide a pointer or scan the pages.

150941
Ch.149 member #77

[Jeff Hess]

TOm.

Broken link!

help!

JPH

[Tom McIntyre]

A short maintenance session turned into nearly an all day ordeal and the new piece of equipment still did not work. :frown:

Everything is up and running now but I need to go sit in the Jacuzzi for a while. :smile:

I think the Bulletin article was by Gerrit Nijssen. He is doing some off line research for Rudy.

Tom McIntyre
NAWCC 2nd VP Candidate
Tommy the JOAT's Web (http://www.AWCo.org)

[Tom McIntyre]

Gerrit dug out some photos and sent them to me to post. They are at http://www.nawcc-info.org/Nijssen/nijssen.htm

Here are thumbnails of them.

http://www.nawcc-info.org/Nijssen/AL1368_small.jpg (http://www.nawcc-info.org/Nijssen/AL1368.jpg) http://www.nawcc-info.org/Nijssen/AL1654_small.jpg (http://www.nawcc-info.org/Nijssen/AL1654.jpg) http://www.nawcc-info.org/Nijssen/AL2438_small.jpg (http://www.nawcc-info.org/Nijssen/AL2438.jpg) http://www.nawcc-info.org/Nijssen/AL3854_small.jpg (http://www.nawcc-info.org/Nijssen/AL3854.jpg)
The following is from Gerrit<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
In response to your questions following is some of the information I have
collected over the years.



When Lange started the manufacturing of watches, he had to find a market for
his products and America had great potentials. I have seen and found some
early examples of his products in New England. The photo of the odd shaped
watch is Lange # 1368 (approx. 1855) and the "dirty" movement has no name,
only a serial 1654 number under the dial (approx. 1856) In Meis's book is
an identical movement (# 1397).

This summer, a friend of mine found in a local show an early "springende
secunde" movement # 2248 (the pillar plate is marked G&L under the dial). I
believe that it was Lange's first model with a complication, i.e. a "seconde
morte". It would not surprise me if he had shipped the watch to America to
show the capabilities of the factory. In these early days of the American
watch industry the government had to protect it from foreign imports and a
tariff (import duty) was introduced. To get around this, foreign movements
were cased in the US and quite a few Lange movements were also cased in
Havana, Cuba. I have seen Lange watches cased in CWS cases and IWC watches
in Brooklyn Watch Comp., cases .

One of the importers in NY was Max Freund & Co. located at 8 Maiden Lane in
New York. Another importer of high-grade watches like A.P. Walsh and
A.Lange was Samuel Hammond & Co. at 41 Williams Street in New York.



I have not been able to determine if Lange had a sales person/office in the
Boston area. Movement #2438 is a 19J KW movement marked M. Goldsmith
Worcester, here in Massachusetts. The pillar plate is marked G&L under the
dial. KW watch # 3854 is a 18S, 19J watch marked Samuel Hammond & Co. New
York.



I hope that this information is helpful



Gerrit

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Tom McIntyre
NAWCC 2nd VP Candidate
Tommy the JOAT's Web (http://www.AWCo.org)

[This message was edited by Tom McIntyre on January 31, 2003 at 22:19.]

[This message was edited by Tom McIntyre on January 31, 2003 at 22:21.]

[Greg Davis]

Tom, you are correct. August 1976 edition (#183)

150941
Ch.149 member #77

[Tom McIntyre]

I edited the previous post to put in Gerrit's text.

Tom McIntyre
NAWCC 2nd VP Candidate
Tommy the JOAT's Web (http://www.AWCo.org)

[pwrudy]

Thank you soo much to you all and your most interesting contributions which helped me quite a lot!!! :smile: My friend was delighted when I told him what was uncovered here!
If anyone has some more pictures to share, please do not hesitate to contact me at this forum or privately at rudolf@abtei-hamborn.de
Any A.Schneider or Grossmann watches would be very welcome as well.
Thanks again and have a good time chatting
Rudolf :cool:

Greg, you mentioned you had a copy of the 1976 Bulletin that referenced the Glashutte area....I would really appreciate seeing that article. Can you possibly scan the article and email them to me? (jaws70@cox.net)

Thanks!

Jean

[Greg Davis]

Sure. Better yet, I'll post it so you and everyone else who might be interested could download it. I'll post a note here when it's ready.

150941
Ch.149 member #77

[Greg Davis]

Okay, here are the pages. Each page is about 200K download, so be patient. I could have made them smaller, but decided for the sake of readability to go with 100 DPI scans.

Page 1 (http://users3.ev1.net/~temporal-treasures/glashutte/glashutte1.jpg)
Page 2 (http://users3.ev1.net/~temporal-treasures/glashutte/glashutte2.jpg)
Page 3 (http://users3.ev1.net/~temporal-treasures/glashutte/glashutte3.jpg)
Page 4 (http://users3.ev1.net/~temporal-treasures/glashutte/glashutte4.jpg)
Page 5 (http://users3.ev1.net/~temporal-treasures/glashutte/glashutte5.jpg)
Page 6 (http://users3.ev1.net/~temporal-treasures/glashutte/glashutte6.jpg)
Page 7 (http://users3.ev1.net/~temporal-treasures/glashutte/glashutte7.jpg)
Page 8 (http://users3.ev1.net/~temporal-treasures/glashutte/glashutte8.jpg)
Page 9 (http://users3.ev1.net/~temporal-treasures/glashutte/glashutte9.jpg)
Page 10 (http://users3.ev1.net/~temporal-treasures/glashutte/glashutte10.jpg)
Page 11 (http://users3.ev1.net/~temporal-treasures/glashutte/glashutte11.jpg)
Page 12 (http://users3.ev1.net/~temporal-treasures/glashutte/glashutte12.jpg)
Page 13 (http://users3.ev1.net/~temporal-treasures/glashutte/glashutte13.jpg)
Page 14 (http://users3.ev1.net/~temporal-treasures/glashutte/glashutte14.jpg)
Page 15 (http://users3.ev1.net/~temporal-treasures/glashutte/glashutte15.jpg)
Page 16 (http://users3.ev1.net/~temporal-treasures/glashutte/glashutte16.jpg)
Page 17 (http://users3.ev1.net/~temporal-treasures/glashutte/glashutte17.jpg)
Page 18 (http://users3.ev1.net/~temporal-treasures/glashutte/glashutte18.jpg)

- Greg

150941
Ch.149 member #77

Thanks so much Greg!

You are a jewel :biggrin:

Jean