Montblanc’s watch that dedicated to legendary mountaineer and adventurer Reinhold Messner’s Gobi Desert adventure has a unique caseback engraving.
Among the watches introduced by Montblanc at the Watches and Wonders 2021, 1858 Geosphere Limited Edition 1858 has one of the best caseback engravings we have ever seen. Many stories can be told by looking at Mongolian engraving at the caseback, that’s why, Laurent Lecamp was right when he said at Saatolog Exclusive broadcast; “I called this watch as a book. It is like first page of a book, beginning of an adventure.”
The model, dedicated to Reinhold Messner, the world’s most legendary mountaineer and adventurer (Messner, one of the brand’s ambassadors), has a perfect integrity: The brand that takes its name from the highest mountain in the Europe, collaborate with most important mane of mountaineering and produces watches for him in the Geosphere series devoted to “explorations in the mountains and nature”. If we were interested in explorations, we would never miss this watch.
Reinhold Messner is the first ascent of Everest without supplemental oxygen, first climber to ascend all fourteen peaks over 8,000 meters above sea level, and he is also first person that crossed Gobi Desert alone. The Gobi Desert is not the largest desert of world, but between China and Mongolia, it is the northernmost desert in the world, thus the least populated; therefore, it is considered impossible to cross. The new Geosphere model is also dedicated to Messner‘s journey in 2004; from the color of the dial to the steppe and windmill laser engraving on the back, it refers to the Gobi Desert.
Geosphere is one of the Montblanc’s iconic models that can be distinguished by its design. Since it is inspired by military watches of 1940s, all watches of series have retro designed and each Geosphere timepiece have two-domed hemisphere rotating on the dial. The dial, which we have seen in blue and green colors before, now in colors of the poetic desert landscape: The micro-sandblasted 42 mm bronze case with a brown ceramic coated bezel; the main points for the scale are engraved and hammered with Super-LumiNova; to increase the desert effect, smoked brown lacquer was applied on the dial as a final layer on the beige layer. Thus, a desert effect was achieved with transitions. The hands, Arabic numbers and hemispheres are stunning in rose gold. The Montblanc logo is written in vintage style.
At the caseback, the rocks on the Gobi Desert and the Flaming Cliffs, also known as Bayanzag are displayed in 3D. As Laurent Lecamp said in our interview for this part of watch, Montblanc used laser engraving technique, a technique that used for the first time by a watch brand. The back of the titanium case is engraved with the effect of the laser’s degree of oxidation; thus, color could be stay same for many years. The patterns on the windmill are on the Mongolian style. This look is accompanied by the names of the magnificent and at the same time dangerous mountains, which Messner climbed, at bezel. As its name signifies, 1858 Geosphere Limited Edition 1858 was produced to 1,858 pieces.
The timepiece has the MB29.25 mechanism, produced by Minerva (1858 takes its name from the year of Minerva’s foundation, as you know). The movement has 28,800 vibrations per hour and has a power reserve of 42-hour. Except two hemispheres, the dial also features a 24-hour scale with rose gold coated and a brown day-night indicator.
Whenever you are scared to embark on an adventure, just turn the watch to remember Messner‘s adventure in the Gobi Desert.
