IWC
IWC holds 1,763 watches in this library, in ten collections and on 135 movements. It is the most complicated of the larger brands here: 27 per cent of its watches are chronographs and 9 per cent carry a perpetual calendar, most of them Kurt Klaus's design of 1985.
Collections
Da Vinci
The Da Vinci is IWC's collection for calendar complications, and the 1985 Perpetual Calendar by Kurt Klaus is the reason it matters.
Pallweber
Portugieser
The Portugieser is IWC's plain-dialled wristwatch, made in 1939 for two Portuguese merchants who wanted marine-chronometer precision on the wrist.
Pilot
IWC's Pilot's Watches descend from the 1936 Special Pilot's Watch and the 1948 Mark 11 made for the Royal Air Force.
Portofino
The Portofino is IWC's dress collection, named after the Ligurian harbour and launched in 1984 as a 46 mm wristwatch built around a pocket-watch movement.
Ingenieur
The Ingenieur is IWC's anti-magnetic watch, made in 1955 for engineers and scientists and redesigned by Gérald Genta in 1976.
Big Pilot
The Big Pilot's Watch is IWC's 46 mm aviator with a seven-day movement, revived in 2002 from the 55 mm watch IWC made for the Luftwaffe in 1940.
GST Aquatimer
The Aquatimer is IWC's dive watch, made since 1967, and this collection also holds the GST line of 1997 to 2005 that carried it.
Grande Complication
The Grande Complication is IWC's ref 3770 of 1990: a perpetual calendar, a chronograph and a minute repeater in one 42.2 mm case.
Vintage Collection
The Vintage Collection is the set of six re-editions IWC made in 2008 for its 140th anniversary.
About IWC
The International Watch Company was founded in Schaffhausen in 1868 by Florentine Ariosto Jones, an American engineer who wanted Swiss craftsmanship with American production methods, and it remains the only major Swiss watchmaker in the German-speaking east of the country. Its reputation was made on movements: the Pallweber digital pocket watches of 1884, the Mark XI pilot's watch of 1948, and in 1950 Albert Pellaton's winding system, a heart-shaped cam that winds in both directions and still drives the seven-day calibers, as the Pellaton piece explains.
The catalogue divides evenly across five lines. The Portugieser, 351 watches, began in 1939 when two Portuguese importers asked for a wristwatch with a pocket-watch movement and has carried a seven-day automatic since 2000, today the 52010. The Pilot's Watches, 344, and the Big Pilot, 146, descend from the Mark XI and the 55 mm observation watch of 1940. The Portofino, 276, is the dress line of 1984; the Da Vinci, 270, is where Klaus's perpetual calendar first appeared, a mechanism set entirely from the crown that displays the four-digit year; and the Ingenieur, 216, is the 1955 anti-magnetic watch in its soft-iron cage, redesigned by Gérald Genta in 1976. The Aquatimer diver of 1967 adds 101, rated to 2,000 m at its deepest, and the Grande Complication of 1990 sits at the top with 23.
Most of the chronographs run on the Valjoux 7750 in IWC's 79xxx family, and three of them lead the caliber list: the 79261 that carries Klaus's perpetual calendar, the 79230 split-seconds of the Doppelchronograph and the 79350 of the Portugieser Chronograph; the in-house 69375 and 89361 column-wheel chronographs are replacing them. The three-handers sit on the ETA 2892 as the 30110 and the Sellita-based 35111, and 51 quartz Portofinos and Pilot's Watches carry the 631, a Jaeger-LeCoultre mechaquartz chronograph.
The cases are large, a median of 42 mm and 14.3 mm thick, and split almost evenly between steel at 47 per cent and gold or platinum at 42, with titanium and ceramic beyond both and Ceratanium, IWC's own ceramised titanium, on 13. Thirty per cent of the watches here are limited editions, the highest share of any brand after Panerai and Vacheron Constantin, and a quarter of the scored watches carry a rarity score of 8 or more.