Kallinich Claeys is the Next Generation of Saxon Watchmaking Excellence

Certain ateliers don’t just produce movements, they produce watchmakers. That was the case in the heyday of movement-specialist Renaud & Papi, whose alumni include the likes of the Grönefeld Brothers, Stephen Forsey of Greubel fame, and Tony de Haas, Director of Product Development for A. Lange & Söhne. Now Lange at least seems to be paying it forward as two of their own watchmakers strike out on their own.

Those watchmakers are Johannes Kallinich and Thibault Claeys, whose shiny new atelier – inventively dubbed Kallinich Claeys – launched their first pair of watches earlier this year. But if you were expecting the usual, reserved elegance of their Saxon counterparts, think again.

Before we get into the watches, it’s worth noting that the idea to set up a watch label didn’t come out of nowhere. At 24, Kallinich was the head of the Lange 1 department, and frustratingly young to be leading the prestige German watchmaker’s flagship collection. This also came with a secondary opportunity, the chance to create a masterpiece watch.

It was this masterpiece that planted the seed for Kallinich Claeys. After teaming up with Claeys in 2022 – who was working on the Lange 1815 at the time – the pair decided to take the masterpiece concept further. Two years later, the first prototypes of the Einser Central Seconds are here, and they promise a very, very interesting watch.

The dial is where most of the visual action is happening. The outer blue ring is hand-hammered for a gorgeously grained texture, while the inner black dial is engraved. You’ll notice there are two different engravings. The first, the almost mountainous, abstractly topographical version is for the Founder’s Edition, the first eight Einser pieces available.

The barleycorn guilloche is for the (for want of a better word) ‘standard’ edition. Both are stunning, but the Founder’s Edition is much more unusual. The innermost silver dial is finished in tremblage, a kind of hammered engraving that thematically combines the other two dial techniques. The result is a multilayered, multi-finished dial like few other watches can achieve. Not a bad start.

The thing is, it’s not the dial that took two years of development. While the techniques used are exceptional, they’re nothing new. Time-consuming and difficult, yes, but very much within Kallinich and Claeys’ joint-wheelhouse. The trickier part however was the case.

At first glance, the 41mm of stainless steel is pretty straight-forward. Except that it’s machined from a single piece of steel, including the stepped lugs, the recesses in the sides of the case, the metallicised outer edge, everything seems designed to make prototyping the Einser a nightmare. Then there’s the power reserve indicator.

Rather than an indicator on the dial spoiling all their hard handswerks, the Einser has a linear power reserve on the side of the case. This little window of sapphire crystal needed to be set into the machined case after being cut and polished to such minute degrees that a large part of the development of the watch went into making it work. Is that obsessive? Yes. But that’s kind of the point.

By this point, you kind of expect the movement to be developed from the ground-up too. It beats at 18,000 beats per hour, so a nice, stately 2.5hz and has a 45-hour power reserve. It’s impressive enough, but nothing compared to the finishing. That soft, warm tone to the metal is because it’s built from German silver – which makes sense for both the pair’s background and their home in Glashütte. The gears are all chamfered, bridges are all bevelled and polished along their edges and flat surfaces are beautifully grained. This is classical German watchmaking in its purest form.

So how much will all this set you back? €24,900 (approx. £20,650). That seems suspiciously little for a watch like this, a proper independent timepiece developed from the ground-up and finished to an immaculate degree. That’s probably part of the reason all eight founders’ editions and 22 ‘standard’ editions have already sold – before anyone’s really handled the prototype.

There is a Hong Kong edition that is being built for A Watch Company, but with only ten of the darker, moodier versions available – and a voracious hunger for serious watchmaking in the city – it’s unlikely you’ll see one of those outside of a serious watch auction.

What it does show though is the incredible faith collectors have in Kallinich Claeys. We’ve discussed before that independent watchmaking is on the rise now more than ever, outside of the big, auction headlining names, with new blood coming into the haute horological world. This pair of maestros may just be the frustratingly fresh face to that rise.

More details at Kallinich Claeys.

​Oracle Time 

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