Swiss 14K gold open faced keyless dress watch Circa 1920

Gold lever watch by International Watch Company
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An elegant and thin Swiss 14-carat gold keyless lever pocket/dress watch, circa 1920. Matte gilt movement, 17 jewels, the upper jewels in screwed chatons, straight-line lever escapement, cut bimetallic compensation balance, blued steel Breguet balance spring, swan neck micrometre regulator. Hinged gold cuvette. A three-piece white enamel dial with large Arabic hours, an outer minute track, subsidiary seconds at six o’clock and blued steel spade hands. Dial and cuvette signed, case and movement signed and numbered.
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Diameter: 55.5 mm
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Signed: International Watch Co  Schaffhausen
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The dial is spotted.
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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 intending to combine 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.
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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 northeast Switzerland: the International Watch Company in Schaffhausen.