IWC Schaffhausen Portugieser watches

The IWC Portugieser goes back to 1939, when two Portuguese importers, Rodrigues and Teixeira, asked IWC for a large wristwatch with a highly accurate movement. IWC answered with the reference 325: its calibre 74, a hand-wound pocket-watch movement, in a 41.5 mm steel case. IWC built 690 of them between 1939 and 1981, and 141 went to Portugal.

The line returned in 1993 with the Jubilee, reference 5441, made for IWC's 125th anniversary in 1,000 steel, 500 rose gold and 250 platinum pieces. The Chrono-Rattrapante 3712 and the Minute Repeater 5240 followed in 1995. The Chronograph 3714 of 1998, a 40.9 mm bicompax with applied Arabic numerals and leaf-shaped feuille hands, stayed in the range until 2020, when the 41 mm IW3716 with the manufacture calibre 69355 replaced it. In 2000 the Automatic reference 5000 brought the calibre 5000, with Pellaton winding and a seven-day reserve, first as a 2,000-piece limited edition in steel, gold and platinum. The Hand-Wound Eight Days has a 192-hour reserve, and the Automatic 40 of 2020 uses the in-house calibre 82200.

Most of the range sits between 40 and 46 mm. The Chrono-Automatic and Chrono-Rattrapante share the 40.9 mm case; the Automatic 5007 measures 42.3 mm and the Automatic 40 40.4 mm. The complications are larger: the Annual Calendar, the Tourbillon Mystère and most Perpetual Calendars at 44.2 mm, the Grande Complication at 45 mm, and the Constant-Force Tourbillon Double Moon and the Sidérale Scafusia at 46 mm. The Yacht Club Chronograph runs from 43.5 to 45.5 mm, with titanium Ocean Racer and Volvo Ocean Race versions.

Cases come in steel, red, rose and white gold and platinum, and many pieces are small runs: boutique editions for Paris, Geneva, Munich and Toronto, film-festival pieces for Tribeca, the BFI London Film Festival and Beijing, Laureus charity editions and the 150 Years anniversary models, some of them unique pieces.