While waiting for my Portuguese Perpetual Calendar 502218 to kick over from 2024 to 2025, I was looking through my earliest IWC catalog, from 2007. I sure do miss the print catalogs that IWC used to produce. Great stuff to look back through, years later.
I was quickly met with an image that had left a long lasting impression. An image of a watch that appeared again in subsequent catalogs, but never in such size and detail as it appears in this (and possibly prior) edition(s). It is the absolutely stunning American-cased Jones Caliber that currently reside in the IWC museum, but is part of the collection of Hannes Pantli:
Just gorgeous. The image has stuck with me since, and when I have searched for it again, I seemed to always come up with much smaller, lesser detailed images from other sources. Well, to my delight, I rediscovered this photograph, and was able to see even the details of the steamer's name on the side of the paddle wheel, the Eagle.
Which led to another search and the discovery of a new image, the source of the artist's inspiration for the case engraving:
Very cool to see the image source of a gorgeous Jones. It used to be I was most interested in pocket watch movements. But these old cases, along with the movements, are real treasures, and my appreciation is only growing.
Attention IWC Team / Andi
I posted this originally from my Android phone, runing Android 14. When looking at it on my MacBook Pro running Sequoia 15.2, the first two images I posted are smushed down vertically. These images are actual photos that I took with my Android phone. The third image looks correct, and is an image that I had downloaded to my Android phone from the internet, rather than photograph.
When, on my MacBook Pro, I right-click on any of the images and chose "open image in new tab," all of the images open correctly in a new tab.
