Ode to the past

LIKE ANY ELDERLY PERSON who cherishes old keepsakes, IWC Schaffhausen is celebrating its 150th birthday next year by resurrecting a pocket watch it created in 1886. The original Savonnette Pocket Watch Pallweber was a pocket watch, but its brand new reincarnation is in the form of a wristwatch; and as befits the times, it is also IWC's first digital timepiece.

It features jumping numerals that were first developed by an Austrian watchmaker named Josef Pallweber. They show time as a sequence of numbers. When full minutes and hours are reached, the numbers move up by one unit. Only the seconds are shown with a hand.

A total of 20,000 of the jumping hours and minutes pocket watch left the IWC factory. But production was discontinued in 1890 because, according to IWC, the Pallweber pocket watch was "a commercial success for only a limited period of time".

The anniversary wristwatch version of the pocket watch, unveiled to Asian journalists in Shanghai a fortnight ago, is IWC's first jumping hours and minutes wristwatch with a digital display. The hours and minutes on the watch appear in large numerals on rotating discs.

The IWC Tribute to Pallweber Edition "150 Years" features a 45-millimetre red gold case, white lacquered dial, white display discs and a blue seconds hand. The watch will be available in April 2018 in a limited edition of 250 pieces, at around 38,000 Swiss francs (S$52,422) or US$38,600 each.

The Tribute to Pallweber watch is the star of a Jubilee collection of 27 limited-edition models, which will be fully presented next month at the 2018 Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie Geneve (SIHH) watch fair. While they cut across four IWC lines - the Portugieser, Portofino, Pilot's Watches and Da Vinci - IWC says the Jubilee timepieces share one aesthetic element: an imprinted lacquered white or blue dial which is a reminder of heritage enamelled finishes.

IWC's creative director Christian Knoop explains the choice of the special dials - and how they're created: "In a long and complex process, these dials are coated with up to 12 layers of high-quality lacquer, flat-polished, brushed and then imprinted several times. We drew our inspiration from the unusual aesthetic appeal of the enamelled dials used for the historic Pallweber watches."

The white dials are matched with blue hands, and the blue dials with rhodium-plated hands. All the watches in the collection sport black alligator straps. Each model also has the Jubilee insignia "150 Years" on the case back, as a medallion or an engraving.

Adds IWC CEO Christoph Grainger-Herr: "Our Jubilee collection revisits icons from the history of IWC and unites them through a timeless design code to form a unique and impressive collection."

The jumping hours and minutes watch apart, another stand-out model in the collection is the Portugieser Constant-Force Tourbillon. Garbed in the most precious of materials used in watchmaking, in a 46-millimetre platinum case, the timepiece is not only fitted with a gravity defying mechanism, but also one powered by constant-force system which ensures an even flow of energy to it; this makes timekeeping very precise.

The watch, a limited edition of 15, comes also with a single moon phase display that only needs to be corrected by one day after 577.5 years.

Then there's the Portugieser Perpetual Calendar Tourbillon encased in gold, the first IWC tourbillon-perpetual calendar combo. The 45-millimetre complication, limited to 50 pieces, is equipped with a newly developed IWC automatic movement.

The women get it too. For them, IWC presented the Da Vinci Automatic Moon Phase 36. Only 50 pieces of the watch will be produced, each with a moon-phase display and a 36-millimetre yellow gold case decked with 206 white diamonds which amount to 2.26 carats.

The Da Vinci Automatic in a 40.4-millimetre stainless steel case, in a limited edition of 500, is targeted more at entry-level customers. The watch is powered by a new IWC automatic movement with the innovative Pellaton winding system.

(NOTE: IWC only showed selected pieces of the Jubilee collection at Shanghai. The full collection will be presented next month at the 2018 Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie Geneve watch fair.)