Introducing: The IWC Portugieser Hand-Wound Tourbillon Edition ‘D.H. Craig USA,’ A Watch Commemorating IWC Founder F. A. Jones

As many watch aficionados know, IWC is in the unique position of being the only Swiss watchmaking firm to have been founded by an American, Florentine Ariosto Jones, who left the United States after the end of the Civil War. Jones went to Switzerland hoping to introduce American production line manufacturing techniques and to take advantage of both Switzerland’s home-grown watchmaking knowledge and lower labor costs, in order to produce high quality watches that could be sold into the U.S. market. From the beginning, Jones insisted on making very high-grade, accurate timepieces, and some of the earliest, and best quality, “Jones caliber” pocket watch movements were marked “D. H. Craig,” – it’s thought, in honor of Daniel Hastings Craig, who IWC historian Dr. David Seyffer believes may have been Jones’s principle start-up investor. The Portugieser Hand Wound Tourbillon Edition “D.H. Craig USA,” is a limited edition tourbillon intended to commemorate both Jones and Craig, who helped make IWC a reality, and it’s a variation on the existing Portuguiser Tourbillon Hand-Wound.

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