An IWC Portuguese Ref. 5441 ‘Jubilee’ In Platinum: The Beauty Of The Hand Wound Watch

IWC, like virtually every watch brand great or small, produces mostly automatic watches, but some of the most interesting and historically important IWC watches used a small group of beautifully made and designed hand wound movements. IWC used the wristwatch calibers 83, 88, and 89 in both daily wear/dress watches and military service watches; for over 30 years, the caliber 89 powered the Mark XI. Some of IWC’s most spectacular watches were built around the pocket watch movements in the caliber 98 family; these were full bridge, hand finished movements, designed to keep time to marine and navigation standards. In the late 1930s, according to IWC, two Portuguese wholesalers named Rodrigo and Antonio Teixeira, traveled to Schaffhausen and asked IWC for something unusual: a stainless steel watch with the precision of a chronometer grade pocket watch.

The result, which first reached the market in 1939, was the reference 325. The ref. 325 was produced in quite small numbers as its large size, and the pocket watch movements used, made it very much a niche item in IWC’s catalog. Three versions of the 325 were made, using IWC pocket watch calibers 74, 98, and 982 (the latter was the caliber 98 but with antishock protection for the balance pivots, as well as a monometallic Glucydur balance). In all, between 1939 and 1981, only 690 ref. 325 watches were made, although with an enormous variety in dial designs.

In 1993, for the 125th anniversary of IWC, the company decided to produce a new series of Portuguese watches. These were made in a limited edition of just 1,000 pieces in steel, 500 in rose gold, and 250 in platinum, and used a specially engraved version of the caliber 982, the caliber 9828. The launch of the Jubilee model, ref. 5441, was the first time that IWC had officially given the name “Portuguese” to the watch. The last appearance of the full-bridge caliber 982 was in 1997, in a 50 piece limited edition made for Pisa Orologi of Milan. Later versions of the hand-wound Portuguese would use a movement with a simpler bridge design (caliber 98290, which was launched in 2006, was the caliber 982, modified to commemorate pocket watch movements created by IWC’s founder, the American Florentine Ariosto Jones).  In 2015, IWC began using “Portugieser” (the German word for “Portuguese”) and that’s the official name for any Portuguese model today.

The Jubilee ref. 5441 in platinum is an imposing watch. The layout and size hint at the pocket watch origins of the model; this is an intentionally large watch, with a 42mm x 9.8mm case, leaf shaped hands, and applied Arabic numerals. The logo is the classic IWC script logo, with “Schaffhausen” in a capital serif font underneath. From the dial side, the 5441 is essentially indistinguishable from the ref. 325 and you’d be very hard pressed to pick it out from a group of 325s.

The case construction’s also something from a bygone era. The 5441 has a snap back, 30 meter water resistant case, with the only update from the 325 being the sapphire display back; in keeping with tradition, the crystal’s plexiglass.

If the dial side is an exercise in classical sobriety (albeit luxurious classic sobriety, with all that platinum) the movement side is a breathtaking display of the best of traditional fine watchmaking, and of the unique visual appeal of a classic hand-wound movement.

Caliber 9828 is 37.80mm in diameter, but quite thin at 4mm, running in 19 jewels at 18,000 vph/2.5Hz. Power reserve is 54 hours, and the movement is jeweled back to the mainspring barrel, with the going train jewels set in gold chatons. The only concessions to modernity are the antishock springs and the solid balance, otherwise this is a picture perfect example of a high grade pocket watch movement from the 1930s. The crown wheel is under a separate bridge, as is the mainspring barrel, and the center and third wheels are under the graceful S-shaped bridge that divides the movement in half. The fourth wheel (which turns once per minute, and on whose pivot the seconds hand is set) and escape wheel each have their own cock.

The balance spring is a Breguet type overcoil, with a very finely made micrometric swan’s neck regulator. The watch is equipped with a stop seconds lever – a quite large one, which you can see running along the left side of the balance. Perlage decorates the mainplate; the movement bridges have precisely aligned Geneva (Schafhaussen) stripes, applied in the tradtional manner with a rotating boxwood disk, and rounded anglage is present on all the bridges and cocks, which have mirror polished flanks.

The quality of the steelwork is exceptional as well, with black polished screws, and excellent attention to detail in components like the regulator components. This design, with its three bridges and three cocks, gives plenty of scope for the use of sharp inner angles on the anglage, which are found exactly where you would expect them to be in a classic pocket watch or wristwatch full bridge movement – adjacent to the center wheel jewel, and to the jewels for the fourth wheel and escape wheel. The cal. 98 and its variants were produced from 1936 up until 1997, an incredible production run that speaks to the inherently logical and reliable characteristics of the design.

The layout is one which can be found in a number of high grade, hand wound movements from manufacturers as diverse as Patek Philippe, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Valjoux and others, and it was as prevalent as it once was, because it’s an inherently rational, and rationally beautiful, way to lay out a hand-wound watch movement. It’s also a layout which expresses the inherent mechanical harmony of a hand wound watch movement, and such full bridge layouts have become something of an endangered species, although there are some independents today who are bringing back their version of the genre. Outside the world of independent horology, there are almost no full bridge calibers time only calibers left, pocket watch sized or otherwise, which have been designed from the ground up as hand-wound movements; the tendency nowadays is to used de-tuned automatic calibers, which is of course, perfectly fine from a practical standpoint as well as sensible from a cost perspective, but I can’t help but feel that it’s kind of a cop-out. A hand wound movement doesn’t have to be a classic Swiss full bridge layout to be drop dead beautiful; Philippe Dufour’s Simplicity caliber isn’t a full bridge movement, nor is anything made by Roger Smith, to pick just two of many possible examples. But there is a special, inherent grace to a full bridge movement. The only full bridge pocket watch movement I’m aware of in production today, is the 1-17 LEP PS (Lepine, Petite Seconds) caliber from Patek Philippe.

It’s hard to think of a better value in a hand wound watch. This is one of the most flat-out beautiful and characterful wristwatches that IWC has ever made, and, with the caliber 9828, it represents a climactic closing chapter in over a century’s worth of high grade pocket watch movement manufacturing at IWC. Pocket watches are enjoying a resurgence of interest among collectors, but the only pocket watch movement being produced at any kind of scale today is the Unitas/ETA 6497/8 and its clones. The 5441 is one of the last of a once proud lineage, and the quality, beauty, and history it embodies makes it stand alone today.

The 1916 Company is proud to be an authorized retailer for IWC. View our pre-owned IWC and pre-owned Portugieser collections. The IWC Jubilee Portuguese ref. 5441: case, platinum, 42mm x 9.8mm, 30 meter water resistance, with Plexiglass front crystal and sapphire display snap-back. Movement, IWC caliber 9828, savonette-type full bridge pocket watch caliber, running at 18,000 vph in 19 jewels with 54 hour power reserve, 37.80mm x 4mm; Breguet overcoil balance spring with swan’s neck fine regulator. See it here.