Temps de lecture : < 1 minute
{News published in 2009} Walter Lange, founder of A. Lange & Söhne celebrated his 85th birthday. When asked what his very first watch was, he answered “A Cyma”. I have always thought that this current desire to separate haute-horlogerie from the other was a mistake. It is unnatural. Swiss watchmaking history, whose upward excellence remains its best ambassador, has never ceased to be nourished by mass production watchmaking, by volumes. The main thing is to catch the virus and to militate for the recognition of the cultural dimension of watchmaking. A stabilizing dimension, contrary to periods that focus only on its status as an economic branch…
Caption: Walter Lange in his youth.
✍ Joel A. GrandjeanChief editor & publisher of the online watch magazine "Swiss Watch Passport® (by JSH®)" and of the Swiss watch journal JSH® (founded in 1876). Member of Impressum, PressTourim and Club Suisse de la Presse, this Ivory Coast-born Swiss, descendant of a family of watchmakers, co-founded the magazines Montres Passion & Uhren Welt at Ringier in 1993 with Kenan Tegin, as well as the Prix Montre de l'Année. Founded in 2005, his press agency TàG Press +41 contributes to some twenty media. These include Journal Suisse d'Horlogerie (2008-2014), Heure Suisse/Schweiz and Année Horlogère, F/D/E (2011-2014), Watchonista.com (2013-2019). In 2019, he founded and chaired "JSH Archives & Patrimoine" to relaunch the Swiss watchmaking journal JSH. Then in 2021, he built on his very first editorial venture, the "bloghorloger.ch" founded in 2003, to come back online with the Swiss Watch Passport® (by JSH®). Joël A. Grandjean is a member of the SSC, the Swiss Society of Chronometry, and of the jury of the Prix Gaïa, aka the "Nobel of watchmaking" awarded since 1992 by the MIH, Le Musée International de l'Horlogerie in La Chaux-de-Fonds.
