1858

The 1858 collection takes its name from the founding year of the Fabrique d'Horlogerie Minerva in Villeret, the Bernese Jura manufacture that became part of Montblanc with the acquisition completed in 2006-2007. It is the line in which the brand engages most directly with the technical heritage inherited from that manufacture: pocket and wrist chronographs, telemeter and pulsometer counters, single-pusher and split-seconds chronographs are all part of Minerva's historical vocabulary, which the 1858 draws on in a contemporary key.

The collection's aesthetic explicitly looks to the military and exploration chronographs of the early decades of the twentieth century, when this type of watch accompanied mountaineers and expeditions into extreme territories: weathered dials, high-contrast luminous indexes and hands, vintage fabric or leather straps, and cases often made of bronze, a material that with wear and natural oxidation "ages" uniquely on every example, accentuating its character as a lived-in instrument.

The line's best-known model, the 1858 Geosphere, presented at SIHH 2018, introduces an original in-house complication: two rotating globes — one for the northern hemisphere and one for the southern — that complete a full rotation every 24 hours, offering a simultaneous reading of time zones in both hemispheres with day/night indication; the ceramic bezel bears the abbreviations of the highest peaks of the seven continents, an explicit nod to the brand's own name and the collection's mountaineering vocation. Over time the 1858 has been enriched with further variants — Automatic Date, Chronograph, Monopusher, limited-edition runs produced in collaboration with real mountaineers and expeditions, such as the one dedicated to Reinhold Messner — always keeping the thread running between mountain, exploration and in-house chronography.