Swiss 14 Carat yellow gold lever pocket watch Circa 1920

Gold watch with two-tone dial
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A Swiss 14 Carat yellow gold pocket watch, circa 1930. A solid, polished, Louis XV case, engraved of a hinged case back. A two-tone silver dial with applied yellow gold Arabic numerals and baton indexes, outer minute track, subsidiary seconds dial and yellow gold epee hands. Rhodium plated movement, Geneva striping decoration, 17 jewels, straight line lever escapement, cut bimetallic compensation balance, self compensating blue steel Breguet balance spring, index regulator. Dial, case and movement signed.
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Thickness: 10 mm
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Diameter: 49 mm
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Signed: International Watch Co.  Schaffhausen
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Some scratches on the dial and case.
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International Watch Company Schaffhausen (IWC) was founded in 1868 by Florentine Ariosto Jones (1841–1916), an American engineer and watchmaker from Boston, Massachusetts, who had been a director of E. Howard & Co, Boston, America’s leading watchmaking company at the time. He established the company with the intention of combining modern engineering technology from the U.S. with the craftsmanship of the Swiss to manufacture high-quality watches exclusively for the American market. Then, wages in Switzerland were relatively low although there was a ready supply of skilled watchmaking labour mainly carried out by people in their homes. Jones encountered opposition to his plans in French-speaking Switzerland. People feared for their jobs and the work they did at home because he wanted to open a factory. In 1850 the town of Schaffhausen was in danger of being left behind in the Industrial Age. At this stage, watch manufacturer and industrialist Johann Heinrich Moser built Schaffhausen’s first hydroelectric plant and laid the cornerstone for future industrialization. He probably met Jones in Le Locle and showed great interest in his plans. Together, they laid the foundations for the only watch manufacturer in north east Switzerland: the International Watch Company in Schaffhausen.