At this year’s Watches & Wonders, Montblanc premiered its first diver’s watch, available with a blue, green and black dial and water-resistant to 300 meters or 1,000 feet. The brand’s take on this sought-after watch genre is quite refreshing; instead of referring to maritime diving, the glacial lakes around the Mont Blanc massif in the Northern France Chamonix valley inspired the 1858 Iced Sea Automatic Date.
To capture the rough alpine beauty of the Mer de Glace (“Sea of Ice”) on its blue dial, the designers revived an old technique called gratté boisé. In this process, a special wooden tool is used to carefully “scrape” the surface in order to evoke the impression eternal ice. The green colorway refers to Antarctic regions where microscopic snow algae blossoms create a greenish hue. Black, on the other hand, can occur, when there is a complete absence of inclusions and the ice absorbs so much light that it appears almost black.
With their unique frosted look, build a magnificent backdrop for the eight rhodium-plated index markers and four Arabic numeral. Thanks to their luminescent coating, they omit a gorgeous glacier blue at night.
As is de rigueur for a professional diver’s watch that complies with the international ISO 6425 standard, stainless-steel case which has a diameter of 41mm and a height of 12.9 is equipped with a unidirectional rotating bezel. Inside we find the automatic MB 24.17 movement, based on the Sellita SW200, which adds a date aperture at 3 o’clock. It ticks behind a closed back with a detailed relief engraving. The price for the version with a bracelet is $3,190, paired with a rubber strap it retails for $2,975.
To learn more, visit Montblanc, here.
