Maison 49 of 100 · Haute Horology
IWC
The reading
The least ‘Geneva’ of the Geneva-class houses. Founded by an American in Schaffhausen to use Swiss hands and American machines. Pilot’s watches and the Portugieser are tools that grew decorations.
The house
- Origin
- Switzerland
- Founded
- 1868
- Atelier
- Haute Horology
- Ownership
- Richemont
- Signature
- Portugieser / Pilot
- Register note
- Engineering from Schaffhausen This line is the register’s own characterisation, not a sourced figure; see Méthode.
The register, counted around it
Switzerland puts sixteen maisons into this register, the third-largest national group, and this is one of them. By founding year it is the 29th-oldest of the hundred. Haute Horology holds eighteen houses here, and this is the 9th of them. This register files nine houses to Richemont; the others are Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Piaget, Buccellati, Vacheron Constantin, Jaeger-LeCoultre, and two more. Either side of it by founding year the register puts Zenith (1865) and Piaget (1874). Fourteen of the Switzerland maisons here are filed under Haute Horology: Rolex, Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet, Richard Mille, Vacheron Constantin, eight more and this one.