Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Tourbillon Chronograph (26387IO.OO.D002CA.01)

Tutima - Finally Returns Home

WORLDTEMPUS - 13 May 2011

After an absence of 65 years, Tutima is finally returning home to Glashutte. Because its founder Dr. Ernst Kurtz had the foresight to get out of Saxony before the Allied Forces divided the country, the Glashutte brand Tutima was the only one able to continue production in West Germany after East Germany was formed. Fate was therefore kinder to Tutima than to that of other Glashutte brands, and for the last 65 years it has built a reputation for excellent, well designed, and reliable pilot's chronographs using Swiss movements encased in Ganderkesee.

As was announced yesterday in Glashutte, Tutima is now adding to this heritage by moving its production to the factory in Glashutte that the family-owned company bought in 2005, the renovation of which was completed in 2008. Since 2008, Tutima and its head of Glashutte operations Rolf Lang have been working on a highly complicated, limited edition timepiece to honor Kurtz: the Tutima Hommage is the very first minute repeater to come out of Glashutte that was fully conceived, designed and produced in the German Mecca for fine watchmaking.

Ferdinand Adolph Lange patented a simple quarter repeater in 1866 and in 1873 his son Richard Lange began producing a version with an updated mechanical design utilizing a separate spring barrel and stabilized by a typical Glashutte three-quarter plate. The company made about 700 of these up to 1940 (most before 1914). All other repeaters made in Glashutte were based on ebauches supplied by Audemars Piguet or LeCoultre, which the Le Sentier-based company made especially for Glashutte entrepreneurs (among them A. Lange & Söhne, Julius Assmann, and Durrstein). These ebauches were described in LeCoultre's sales catalogues as the "genre allemande" (the German type).

Tutima becomes a big player
With the introduction of the celebratory timepiece, Tutima is positioning itself to become one of Glashutte's big players. The brand is already in possession of an admirable distribution network and a loyal clientele thanks to its well-priced pilot's watches. The introduction of high watchmaking and the promise of continuous expansion in terms of interesting collection pieces will certainly turn this brand into a force to be reckoned with. If the collective Swiss watchmaking community has until now not taken much note of Glashutte's existence, the time is definitely ripe for the Saxon town to be considered a serious competitive force in the luxury market.

Saxon tones
Rolf Lang, one of the most experienced watchmakers of contemporary Glashutte, has enjoyed an exemplary career: previously chief restorer of Dresden's Mathematics-Physics Salon as well as head of restoration and special projects at A. Lange & Söhne, he set up Schaffhausen's Moser & Cie. before turning his attention to Tutima's renaissance in the city of its birth.
It was mainly his experience with repeaters in restoration that gave him the confidence to suggest this ambitious project to Dieter Delecate, owner of Tutima since the 1960s. Tutima's Hommage is high horology based on Glashutte's values and tradition with particular attention paid to stability and exquisite finishing as dictated by the town's historical thinkers and Tutima's own founder, Kurtz, who had a penchant for complicated watches even though he can well be considered Saxony's father of serial industrial manufacture.

The Hommage is a three-handed minute repeater conceived from the ground up in the little factory that currently houses Lang and 14 hand-picked technicians. The 32 mm hand-wound Caliber 800 comprising 550 individual components beats at a frequency of 21,600 vph. With a matte, frosted, gold-plated traditional finish and a Glashutte three-quarter plate, this exceptional movement is directly identifiable as a product of it geographical location. The steel repeater parts - every single one of which have been manufactured and tin-polished to perfection in Glashutte - culminate in the two gongs attached to the case for better resonance. Housed in a 43 mm case of solid rose gold or platinum with the choice of a classic or skeletonized dial, this masterpiece is strictly limited to 25 pieces.
Dr. Ernst Kurtz would certainly have been pleased.