The Seven Summits are the highest mountains of each of the seven continents. Successful climbs or “summiting” all of them is regarded as a mountaineering challenge (the most difficult one at that), first achieved in 1985 by Richard Bass.  The SIHH 2018 Montblanc 1858 Geosphere WorldTime is dedicated to that challenge. Featuring a worldtime complication with two turning domed hemisphere globes, each making a full rotation in 24 hours, one is reminded of the superlative Tourbillon Cylindrique NightSky Geosphères, itself a homage to the daring adventurer Vasco da Gama. More importantly, the new Montblanc SIHH 2018 novelty doesn’t come with a similar eye-watering price tag and a chance to create your own legend.

Indeed, the Tourbillon Cylindrique NightSky Geospheres was a superlative hand-finished watch, with a price tag of €275,000. The same concept sans tourbillon with cylindrical balance spring is applied to the  SIHH 2018 Montblanc 1858 Geosphere WorldTime. The resulting watch is simpler yet it still pays respectful tribute to the 160th anniversary of Minerva and while featuring a brand-new Villeret manufacture WorldTime complication, exposing the world of Montblanc fine watchmaking to a new breed of watch aficionados.

SIHH 2018 Montblanc 1858 Geosphere WorldTime

The northern hemisphere of the Montblanc 1858 Geosphere turns anti- clockwise while the southern hemisphere at 6 o’clock turns clockwise, both surrounded by a scale with the 24 time zones, along with a day/night indication in contrasting colours. A second time zone display at 9 o’clock serves as a quick reference to time at a secondary location, however the ease of reading worldtime via literal hemispheres renders it somewhat redundant if useful from the standpoint of aesthetic balance.

Aesthetically speaking, the world’s Seven summits are marked on the two hemispheres with red dots, drawing your attention to summits yet untamed. They are also engraved on the case back along with the unique drawing of the Mont Blanc mountain, a compass and two crossed ice pick-axes. Design elements are found across the 1858 collection are also found on the Montblanc 1858 Geosphere like cathedral hands and well defined arabic numerals.

By night, this worldtime instrument comes alive with the longitude reference meridian for both hemispheres is highlighted with a white line, and the continents themselves are also coated with SuperLumiNova®. Like the automatic chronograph, the watch comes in two versions, with a stainless steel case or a limited edition bronze case. Both feature polished and satin-finishing as well as vintage fluted crowns with the Montblanc emblem in relief. A new bidirectional stainless steel or bronze bezel with shiny black ceramic completes the design of the 1858 Geosphere WorldTime.

The automatic Calibre MB 29.25 of the Montblanc 1858 Geosphere is powered by an automatic Sellita base movement and topped with a Villeret in-house WorldTime module completely certified by the vaunted Montblanc Laboratory Test 500.

Limited to 1858 pieces.

Montblanc 1858 Geosphere Price and Specs

Movement Automatic in-house Calibre MB 29.25 with 42 hours power reserve
Case 42mm stainless steel or bronze with 100m water resistance
Strap Brown Sfumato aged calf leather Bund strap with beige stitching
Price €5,190 in stainless steel, €5,890 in bronze – Singapore Price: SGD 8300