A glimpse at last month's limited edition Star Legacy Exo Tourbillon Skeleton Enheduanna and the Iced Sea Zero Oxygen Deep 4810 announced at Watches & Wonders
The Stunning Versatility of Montblanc Watchmaking
A glimpse at last month’s limited edition Star Legacy Exo Tourbillon Skeleton Enheduanna and the Iced Sea Zero Oxygen Deep 4810 announced at Watches & Wonders
It’s been a momentous year for Montblanc. In a matter of months, the German luxury maison—producer of exemplary wristwatches, dynamic leather goods and covetable writing instruments—not only celebrated the 100th anniversary of their beloved Meisterstück pen, but they also redefined the depth of their timepiece division. As for the latter, Montblanc moved the benchmark in two directions. First, they debuted the Iced Sea 0 Oxygen Deep 4810—an extreme dive watch, devoid of oxygen, with water resistance to 4,810 meters—at Geneva’s Watches and Wonders 2024 trade show earlier this year. Last month, they introduced an elegant, architectural wonder, the Star Legacy Exo Tourbillon Skeleton Enheduanna, limited to ten pieces—a marvel of gold, onyx and fine mechanical watchmaking. A full circle moment, it also happens to be a tribute to the world’s first known author.
Enveloping the technical functionality of both is a series of nuanced design developments. “To understand the Iced Sea 0 Oxygen Deep 4810, you have to understand the Iced Sea category first,” Laurent Lecamp, the managing director of Montblanc’s watch division, tells COOL HUNTING. “When I joined Montblanc three years ago, the first thing I did was go to the Mont Blanc glacier and look at the ice. I wanted to connect to this place, knowing that the founders adopted its name. I brushed snow off of the ice and took a picture. It gave me an idea so I told the team, we need to create a glacier-inspired dial—the first one in the history of the industry—because who else could do so aside from Montblanc.”
Lecamp and his team translated this early vision into a dial design that referenced the cracks and distinct coloration of glaciers. They went to Montblanc’s dial supplier who said it was impossible—but they pressed on. “After many prototypes, we managed to get there,” Lecamp says. “The dial looks like a real glacier—with the depth, the veins, the grooves. This dial requires more than 30 days to produce. It is composed of 30 layers, and each layer takes one day to dry.” This is in contrast to four to six days for most other Montblanc dials.
The technique used to craft the dial isn’t a future-forward proprietary development but an almost-forgotten ancestral method called gratté-boisé. “It comes from the 19 century,” Lecamp says. “It was not being used anymore in Switzerland. In this process, the dial is made by hand, there are no machines. It requires a specific, protected wood that, when you put hot water on it, becomes like a sponge. The dial is then absorbed and sits at the same level of the wood itself.” Through this ancient technique, Montblanc developed a dial that now defines the Iced Sea aesthetic.
For the Iced Sea 0 Oxygen Deep 4810, the Montblanc team turned to other extraordinary Mont Blanc attributes. For instance, the mountain is 4810 meters in elevation; as such, they strove to build a dive watch that could descend 4810 meters below sea level. To power the watch, the maison created the MB 29.29 automatic movement which is set inside the 43mm case. This unique attribute has the largest power reserve ever for an extreme dive watch—lasting 120 hours (or five days).
There’s also the unusual feature that the watch name addresses: zero oxygen. “This attribute comes from the world of mountaineering,” Lecamp says. “Reinhold Messner, our own mark maker [Montblanc’s brand ambassador title], climbed the highest mountains in the world without the use of supplementary oxygen. That is how the idea came to us to develop a watch with no oxygen inside.” This isn’t just a novel idea; it has a purpose. Montblanc uses proprietary technology to withdraw all oxygen from inside the watch and replace it with nitrogen. It functions two-fold, slowing down the process of oxidation on interior components and preventing the condensation inside a watch case that’s associated with temperature fluctuation or water pressure. Used this way, it’s a world first.
A watch for extreme conditions requires extreme testing. “We had to develop certified equipment for testing these watches,” Lecamp adds. “You can only test 18 per month, so the process is very limited. This limits the production run of the timepiece. Each one has to be tested up to minus 6012 meters and 50 centimeters to be exact, because it is not only the 4810 meters we allude to but the ISO certification, as well. All of our pieces are tested to this level before leaving. It goes to a depth that submarines are not even going.”
An additional aesthetic attribute on the Iced Sea 0 Oxygen Deep 4810 required technological advancements. A rear engraving on the caseback depicts a scene that emulates looking up at the surface of water from underneath it. “We have seven lasers. With them we can create the levels and even the colors on titanium,” Lecamp says. “We have a picture taken by a diver when he was in the water beneath a glacier. That’s what you see on the caseback. You are observing a glacier from below.” This rendition is achieved through exacting prevision—from laser intensity to duration and its specific angle. A small variation to the process, which was developed over hundreds of hours, changes everything. Fortunately, after the process is complete the color is oxidized forever.
The Iced Sea 0 Oxygen Deep 4810 and the Star Legacy Exo Tourbillon Skeleton Enheduanna are only two examples of Montblanc’s commitment to pushing boundaries. “The brand is extremely creative and we are capable of developing timepieces with one of the oldest watch movement manufactures in the industry, Minerva,” Lecamp says. Developing original watch concepts like these, some with world-first attributes, requires resource and investment. Montblanc seems to be generous with both.