Striking Parallels

James Marsden’s portrayal of IWC’s original founder, Florentine Ariosto Jones, opens a window into the hidden life of this historic watchmaker.

- Lynette Kee

Flecks of molten metal and sparks scatter across the opening scene of IWC’s short film, “Born of a Dream: A Man of the Future.” The camera glides through a misty fog while the sound of a ticking watch intensifies until we arrive in Boston, Massachusetts, at the onset of the Civil War.

A wide-eyed young man — played by the actor James Marsden — enters the scene, bewildered. With a large pocket watch in his hand, held at the level of his chest, he reveals his occupation, “watchmaker.”

The subject of this autobiographical short film is Florentine Ariosto Jones, also known as F.A. Jones, an American who had big dreams of starting up a watchmaking factory in Switzerland when it was only a cottage industry in the 1860s. He was an assistant superintendent at the prominent American watchmaking firm E. Howard & Co. when his lightbulb vision prompted him to leave his post, make a passport and take his first international leap into Europe.

Meandering his way through a foreign landscape, Jones eventually founded the International Watch Co. in 1868 (which, later in the 1940s, was shortened to IWC) in Schaffhausen, alongside friend and fellow American watchmaker Charles Kidder. Jones established the company on the basis of marrying the American system of industrialised watch production with the skilful labour of Swiss craftsmen.