IWC Portugaise Remontage Manuel IW545408

The Schaffhausen watch manufacturer IWC is celebrating one of its oldest-established watch families in 2010: the Portuguese watches enter their eighth decade. This will be the occasion for some fascinating novelties, such as the Portuguese Grande Complication, the Portuguese Tourbillon Mystère Rétrograde or the Portuguese Yacht Club Chronograph. These large format, mechanical precision instruments perpetuate the legacy of the famous seafarers to this day – and hand it down to today’s explorers.

“Heroes of the sea, noble race…”, runs the first line of the Portuguese national anthem. It is an expression of the collective memory, in which the great seafarers of Portugal are still very much alive to the present time – Vasco da Gama, Bartolomeu Dias or Fernando Magellan. And in 1934 Fernando Pessoa wrote his national epic “Mar Português – Portuguese Sea”, a homage to the spirit of discovery and heroic courage of the seafarers who made Portugal’s former international standing possible in the first place. Five years later, in 1939, IWC supplied the first Portuguese watches commissioned by two importers in Lisbon and Porto. These were oversized precision timepieces with pocket watch movements in the tradition of nautical instruments. They established a completely new type of watch in those days. Today these watches are a permanent feature of the horological identity of IWC and they are sought-after ambassadors of a watch culture at the highest level all over the world.

In 2010, the Portuguese watches from IWC are entering their eighth decade. They have remained entirely faithful to their historical heritage: clarity, size, accuracy and exquisite mechanics. Most of the complications from the Haute Horlogerie of IWC are present in this family of watches today. And there will be a few more in the “Year of the Portuguese”, which the Schaffhausen manufacturer is dedicating to its classic model. The horological inventiveness, which finds stylish expression in case diameters from more than 40 to 45 millimetres, is impressive.

Witness to time

Portuguese Hand-Wound

The Portuguese Hand-Wound is a contemporary witness to IWC’s Portuguese family of watches, which has been in existence since 1939. Often when the manufacturer celebrates a significant anniversary, it presents connoisseurs with an item that further extends that particular success story. That is once again the case with this unassuming beauty, which celebrates the family’s eighth decade.

The story lives on and impresses through its exceptional levels of achievement. This was already the case in 1993, when the Schaffhausen manufacturer brought the Portuguese watch from 1939 back into the present day as an outstanding example of its skill and expertise to mark the 125th anniversary of its founding. This provided the initial spark for the establishment of the Portuguese family, the most important range of watches from IWC Schaffhausen. The “IWC Vintage Collection”, issued to commemorate the manufacturer’s 140th birthday, was also not complete without a contemporary interpretation of this horological classic.

In 2010, the manufacturer’s “Year of the Portuguese”, in which this horological celebrity enters its eighth decade, the Portuguese Hand-Wound once again builds a bridge between the past and the present and adds another chapter to the story of this historic model. The manufacturer thus delights all connoisseurs of this horological beauty with two unlimited steel models. For it was in a stainless steel case with an original pocket watch movement that the first pocket watch-style wristwatch made its appearance seventy years ago.

The puristic Portuguese line, which combined a timeless, elegant design language with an ultimate degree of horological perfection even when first created, is considered by experts and collectors to be one of the very few watches which epitomizes good taste regardless of prevailing trends. Because only true values endure.  Its characteristic design elements – shape of the case, size and design of the dial – are nonnegotiable. As a result, it is easier to explain what distinguishes this novelty from earlier Portuguese models than what they have in common.

The Portuguese Hand-Wound in stainless steel with a black dial, rhodium-plated Arabic numerals and the characteristic feuille hands is conspicuous by its silver-plated seconds subdial with the distinctive detail of a “60” in signal red. Its sibling model with a silver-plated dial and rose gold-plated indices and hands stands out with its seconds subdial in light grey, also with a small red “60”. Features common to both are the typical chapter ring in the traditional railwaytrack style and, as the drive mechanism, the IWC-manufactured 98295 calibre with stylistic echoes of the first Jones movements, such as the nickel-silver three-quarter bridge and the elongated index to facilitate precision adjustment of the effective length of the spring.

The manufacturer recalls its roots with these two unassuming beauties – and once again pays a compliment to that very first Portuguese watch which approached so close to the ideal of a perfect mechanical watch such a long time ago.