Schaffhausen Pocket Watch

One of Switzerland’s major luxury watch companies was started by an American who saw the potential of bringing Switzerland’s superb watchmaking into the modern age through industrialized manufacturing and high-precision interchangeable parts. The New Hampshire–born watchmaker Florentine Ariosto Jones (1841–1916), who founded International Watch Company — known today as simply IWC — in 1868, was interested in “combining all the excellence of the American system of mechanism with the more skillful hand labor of the Swiss.”

Setting up the company with another American watchmaker, Charles Kidder, in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, Jones used hydropower from the River Rhine for his plant’s machinery. Rethinking watch design would lead to one of IWC’s early successes: the Pallweber pocket watch. Based on an 1883 patent by Austrian watchmaker Josef Pallweber, the watch employed numbered disks for jumping hour and minute displays, making it a pioneer in digital timekeeping.

After Johann Rauschenbach-Vogel took over the watch manufacturer in 1880, four generations of his family led IWC into the 20th century. In 1905, Ernst Jakob Homberger and his brother-in-law Carl Jung — the famed Swiss psychiatrist — acquired IWC. Homberger bought out Jung’s holdings in 1929, and in the 1930s, the company introduced pilot watches, which were particularly robust and aimed solely at the civil aviation industry. These durable wristwatches were designed specifically to remain operational during extreme temperature shifts. (As blue watch dials are particularly hot right now, IWC's blue-dial Big Pilot is having a moment.)

The company still operates alongside the river where it was founded, having gained an international reputation over the past 150 years for its elegant designs and expert craftsmanship. Vintage IWC watches are prized by collectors — of whom there are many these days — and while the company continues to guard its attention to detail and quality, it has pushed its classic designs forward with modern innovation intended to stand the test of time.

IWC’s 2013 Ingenieur watch collection, with its precision based on an inventive constant-force mechanism, looked back to a 1955 Ingenieur model that featured a durable soft-iron inner cage as well as a 1976 update by leading Swiss watch designer Gérald Genta that encased its mechanism in a sleek steel case. IWC has also had a recent push toward sustainability, designing watches that are made to last a lifetime and beyond and earning the highest environmental ranking of any Swiss watch company in a 2018 report published by the World Wide Fund for Nature Switzerland (WWF).

Find vintage IWC wristwatches, Art Deco–style pocket watches and more on 1stDibs.

Can you pull off a vintage pocket watch? Of course you can. With a suit and a waistcoat, a pocket watch can be a refreshing alternative to a wristwatch.

The earliest pocket watches were luxury items, and, owing to cost, they weren’t commonplace until the 19th century. Artfully crafted pocket watches were a symbol of wealth, and manufacturers such as Vacheron Constantin and Patek Philippe became known for theirs. (Today, they’re among the most sought after by collectors and enthusiasts.)

At the onset, pocket watches resembled small round table clocks, and pulling your small round table clock — perhaps of the silver variety — out of your breast pocket in front of someone else demonstrated unequivocally that you cared about punctuality. For collectors, pocket watches are big, and that means a larger canvas provided for functions without crowding the dial. For example, the Marius Lecoultre pocket watch — made circa 1890 — does everything but uncork your wine.

In the late 1800s, the open-face pocket watch became a staple on the American railroad. It was a requirement for railway workers to wear a pocket watch, as the timepieces were responsible for keeping conductors on schedule. This was a boon to the watchmaking industry, with companies like Hamilton, the Elgin National Watch Company and the Waltham Watch Company producing high-grade and workingman’s watches.

By the 1930s, wristwatches comprised the bulk of watch manufacturing in America, superseding the pocket watch. Suddenly, if you wanted to know the time, you merely glanced at your wrist. But given their vintage charm and our general appetite for good design, pocket watches are a piece of statement-making jewelry and today can prove complementary to your formal attire in a manner that is stylish and unconventional.

Let time take its course — browse a vast selection of antique and vintage pocket watches available on 1stDibs designed by legendary brands such as IWC, Cartier and more.