Suliac Monforts is the Winner of F.A. Lange Watchmaking Excellence Award 2011!

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F. A. Lange Watchmaking Excellence Award 2011
For the second time, A. Lange & Söhne bestows young talent award for next generation of watchmakers


Suliac Monforts awarded concept of a power reserve.

On 7 December 2011, the “F. A. Lange Watchmaking Excellence Award”, sponsored by A. Lange & Söhne, was presented in Dresden for the second time. The winner of the international competition for young watch¬makers is the 23 year-old Suliac Monfort from Lycée Edgar Faure in Morteau, France, who was awarded the 10,000 Euro prize by an expert jury for his construction of a power reserve indication based on a Unitas pocket watch movement. The award was overhanded to Suliac Monfort during an event on the occasion of the company’s anniversary by Walter Lange and Lange-CEO Wilhelm Schmid.

The jury decided unanimously on the design of Suliac Monfort because, in comparison to the other entries, his mechanism found the most creative solution with a highly func-tional design, as well as displaying an outstanding level of craftsmanship and artistry. The prize money is specifically awarded for use in advanced watchmaking studies.

In the first round of the competition eight future watchmak¬ers from Germany, Austria, France, Denmark, and the Netherlands qualified for the project from the forty watch-making schools from all over the world that were invited to participate. They attended a summer workshop in the Lange Watchmaking School to become familiar with the Lange watchmaking philosophy. Following the workshop the participants had three months to construct a func¬tional power reserve mechanism on the basis of a Unitas pocket watch movement.

The extremely sophisticated entries were judged in November by a jury of five ex¬perts, including the watch jour¬nalists Gis¬bert L. Brunner and Peter Braun, company foun¬der Walter Lange, Head of Lange’s Product Devel¬opment Anthony de Haas and Direc¬tor of the Mathematics and Physics Sa¬lon in Dresden Dr Peter Plass¬meyer. The judging cri-teria were in¬novation and originality of idea, functional¬ity, techni¬cal quality and crafts-manship as well as artistic realisation.


Walter Lange, Suliac Monfort and Wilhelm Schmid.