MONTBLANC – VILLERET Tourbillon Cylindrique Geosphères Vasco da Gama Limited Edition NEW
A Voyage into Unchartered Territories of the Watchmaking World
The pioneering spirit of the Montblanc Manufacture in Villeret
honours the legacy of one of history’s greatest explorers. For 157
years, Villeret’s master watchmakers have practiced traditional Swiss
watchmaking with the same combination of innovation, precision and
determination that guided Vasco da Gama on his historic expedition.
Uninterrupted and unique artisanal production in strict accordance
with traditional Swiss craftsmanship distinguishes
Montblanc’s
Manufacture in
Villeret. Scarcely anywhere else on Earth is impassioned
craftsmanship pursued as single-mindedly as it is at the Manufacture in
the St. Imier Valley. Since
1858, the valley’s artisanal watchmakers
have created elaborate mechanical movements from components that they
personally craft step by painstaking step until achieving the highest
quality and the ultimate refinement.
Now their voyage into uncharted territories of the watchmaking world
continues with the
Tourbillon Cylindrique Geosphères Vasco da Gama, a
timepiece with the unprecedented combination of a cylindrical tourbillon
and unique triple time zone indication. Strictly limited to eighteen
pieces, the
Tourbillon Cylindrique Geosphères Vasco da Gama is a
revolutionary wristwatch that pushes the boundaries of fine watchmaking
with the utmost performance and spectacular artisanal beauty.
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The Discoverer
Vasco da Gama set sail from Lisbon’s Restelo harbour on 8 July
1497 with a small fleet of four ships. His flagship was the nau
(carrack) Sao Gabriel with a crew of 60 men. The vessel weighed 120
tonnes, was 27 metres long and 8.5 metres wide, had a draught of 2.3
metres, and could raise a total sail area of 372 square metres.
Vasco da
Gama’s destination was the coast of India. If his expedition succeeded,
he would become the first seafarer to find a southern seaway to India.
Nowadays we know that he did indeed succeed. This enabled him to bypass
Arabian, Persian, Turkish and Venetian middlemen who had made it
extremely expensive for Europeans to import precious stones and valuable
spices such as pepper. With this voyage and subsequent expeditions,
Portugal fortified its predominance as a seafaring and trading nation.
The success of
Vasco da Gama’s expedition can ultimately be credited to
its commander’s courage, thirst for action, willingness to take risks
and, above all, his obsession with precision – a trait that is equally
important in fine watchmaking today.
The fleet reached Saint Helena Bay on the southwest coast of
Africa
on 4 November
1497. Several days later, the three Portuguese ships
sailed in a large arc around the Cape of Good Hope and landed in
Mosselbaai on 25 November.
Vasco da Gama finally reached India at a
point near Calicut on the Malabar Coast on 20 May
1498. For the first
time ever, European sailing ships had voyaged to India via a sea route
around the southern tip of
Africa. Fully laden with a bountiful cargo of
precious spices,
Vasco da Gama’s fleet began its homeward voyage to
Portugal on
8 October
1498. The first ship in his fleet reached its
homeland on
10 July
1499.
Vasco da Gama himself landed in Lisbon on 9
September, where a triumphal reception was prepared for him. With this
expedition,
Vasco da Gama became the first European to establish a
sustainable and safe way to travel from Europe to India and thus built a
bridge between the Northern and Southern Hemisphere. His feat connected
people’s lives on both hemispheres for centuries, not only
geographically but also commercially and culturally. The
Montblanc
Villeret Tourbillon Geosphères pays homage to this great explorer and
likewise builds a bridge between the two hemispheres – on the stage of a
wristwatch.
Montblanc Tourbillon Cylindrique Geosphères Vasco da Gama
For many years,
Montblanc and its Manufacture in
Villeret have
presented unique timepieces that express the comprehensive skills of the
artisans at this time-honoured Manufacture. Now the developers and
watchmakers have once again employed all their expertise to create a
wristwatch that is quite literally the ticking “flagship” of the new
Montblanc Vasco da Gama watch collection. It was
Vasco da Gama’s urge to
discover new worlds and his unwavering courage that inspired
Montblanc
and spurred the Manufacture’s watchmakers to achieve superlative
horological feats.
Far more than merely a complicated wristwatch, the
Tourbillon
Cylindrique Geosphères Vasco da Gama also performs an unconventional
horological performance. The 47-mm-diameter case surrounds a
three-dimensional dial that positively invites admiring scrutiny. The
281 components that comprise hand-wound tourbillon
Calibre MB M68.40
support numerous functions in an unprecedented combination: a triple
time zone with local time is displayed in the form of hours and minutes;
the continually running and independently adjustable display for the
home time is presented on a three-dimensional twelve-hour compass rose
at “6 o’clock”; and a pair of globes depict the World´s 24 time zones in
the Northern and Southern Hemisphere, along with the passage of the
days and nights. Engraving and miniature painting on these two halved
balls indicate in relief the outlines of the continents, their borders
and the oceans that separate them. The passage of time accordingly
becomes an impressive and daily recurring spectacle on the wearer’s
wrist and recalls the sea route through the Earth’s two hemispheres that
Vasco da Gama sailed in
1497.
The Dial
The 18-karat gold dial is constructed in various parts and on
different levels. Inspired by the twin distinctive globes,
Montblanc’s
designers relied on round shapes and rounded décor. The upper part of
the dial is the stage for the tourbillon with its arcing, convex,
polished tourbillon bridge. The guilloché embellishment is crafted
accordingly: manually executed guilloché, which adorns the components to
the left and to the right of the tourbillon mechanism, is applied in a
wavy décor inspired by
Vasco da Gama’s voyage across the world’s oceans.
The lower portion of the dial is the arena for the two globes and the
home-time indication in the form of a three-dimensional compass rose.
The hand that sweeps above this rose to indicate the hours is likewise
styled in a “Fleur-de-Lys” shape.
The Globes
The globes illustrate the passage of the days and nights in the
Northern and Southern Hemisphere. Their elaborately crafted and finely
detailed design also shows the circles of latitude and longitude. The
two globes are motionlessly affixed to the movement, while two 24-hour
worldtime indicator discs with the day/night rotate once per day around
them.
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The disc for the Northern Hemisphere turns clockwise; its
counterpart for the Southern Hemisphere rotates anticlockwise. This
arrangement enables the watch’s wearer to view, in the course of a
single day, the sunlit halves of the two globes and the halves that are
currently turned away from the sun. With the aid of the meridians of
longitude, the viewer can read the current hour in any desired part of
the world by following the 24-hour world-time display on the two discs.
The Compass Rose
The continually running and independently adjustable display for the
home time at “6 o’clock” on the dial of the
Tourbillon Cylindrique
Geosphères Vasco da Gama is inspired by the gigantic marble compass rose
at the base of the Padrão dos Descobrimentos. This monument, which
commemorates Portuguese discoverers, stands in the civil parish of Belém
in Lisbon. Comparable to a miniature sculpture, the watch’s compass
rose is composed of four parts, each of which is entirely handmade and
manually decorated.
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The Tourbillon
Montblanc developed the 281-part hand-wound
Calibre MB M68.40
featuring a 91-part tourbillon mechanism with a cylindrical hairspring
which guarantees a power reserve of 48 hours. The balance’s frequency is
18,000 semi-oscillations per hour (2.5 hertz). Thanks to its 14.5-mm
diameter, the balance’s moment of inertia is an 59 mgcm². Few
manufactures nowadays employ artisans with the necessary know-how and
craftsmanly skills to fabricate their own balance wheels and
hairsprings. Without these abilities,
Montblanc could never have
developed the cylindrical hairspring for the
Tourbillon Cylindrique
Geosphères Vasco da Gama.
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Unlike their flat counterparts, cylindrical hairsprings were regarded as the
summum bonum andinstalled
only in the finest and costliest marine chronometers. Valuable ship’s
chronometers were indispensable for seafarers because only with the aid
of a clock that continued to show the correct time with great accuracy
for a lengthy period of time were mariners able to determine their
longitude on the high seas. Today too, a cylindrical hairspring
continues to embody the utmost precision. Like a conventional
balance-spring, a cylindrical balance-spring is a concentrically wound
strip of elastic metal; however instead of being wound side by side, at
increasing distances from a common centre and all on the same plane, its
individual turns are all of equal diameter and are wound one atop the
other. This eliminates the slight eccentricity of the centre of gravity,
which has always been the Achille’s heel of conventional
balance-spring.
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The challenges for
Montblanc’s watchmakers were to
miniaturize this type of hairspring and to install it in the tourbillon
mechanism of a wristwatch. The extremely high degree of in-house
fabrication at the
Montblanc Manufacture in
Villeret, combined with the
expertise accumulated here over many years, enabled these specialists to
create more than merely a “simple” cylindrical hairspring, but to
further equip it with two Phillips terminal curves. The upward curvature
at each end of the spiral contributes toward significantly improving
the regularity of the hairspring’s “breathing,” thus further reducing
the isochronism error.
Montblanc accordingly achieved for this
masterpiece a highly accurate rate.
Incomparable beauty distinguishes the styling of the doubly curved,
three-dimensional, endless loop of the tourbillon bridge, beneath which
the tourbillon’s large cage completes one rotation around its own axis
every sixty seconds. For the
Tourbillon Cylindrique Geosphères Vasco da
Gama,
Montblanc’s typical tourbillon bridge departs for the first time
from its usual planar shape and acquires a convex form. It thus
perfectly harmonizes with the two globes on the dial. A master
watchmaker requires more than seven days to entirely handcraft this
distinctive tourbillon bridge and to give it an absolutely immaculate
polished finish.
The Operation
The indicators on the
Tourbillon Cylindrique Geosphères Vasco da Gama
can be set via the crown, the visible pusher at “8 o’clock” and the
inset corrector on the case’s flank at “4 o’clock”. After pulling the
crown outward, the user can set the local time and simultaneously adjust
the worldtime display along the two globes’ 24-hour scales. The
corresponding buttons on the case are used to finely adjust the local
time in the centre and the home time on the compass rose at “6 o’clock”,
which runs along with the local time.
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Once all indicators have been
correctly synchronized, a new local time in a different time zone can be
set simply by pressing the push-piece at “8 o’clock”. Operating this
pusher advances only the hour-hand in single-hour increments; it does
not affect the minutes, which are shown from the dial’s centre, nor does
it alter the home time at “6 o’clock” or the two displays along the
globes. When the watch’s owner is travelling, he or she can conveniently
read the local time by referring to the hour- and minute-hand in the
centre, check the home time at “6 o’clock” and see the hour anywhere
else in the world by referring to one of the two 24-hour discs around
the globes.
The Case
Montblanc’s 16¾-
line Calibre MB M68.40 is embedded in a
47-mm-diameter and 15.38-mm-height red gold case. The wristband is made
of alligator-skin on both sides and is affixed between two pairs of
rounded, elaborately hand-polished horns. The names of 24 cities in the
Northern Hemisphere and another two dozen metropolises in the Southern
Hemisphere are engraved along with the matching time zones on the back
of the case. The limitation numbers from “01/18” to “18/18”, the serial
number and the reference numbers are engraved on the sapphire crystal in
the back of the case.
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The Montblanc Manufacture Villeret in Switzerland’s Jura Region
A watch manufacture typically falls into one of two categories: it’s
either a new manufactory that fabricates timepieces according to
ultramodern techniques or it’s a time-honoured atelier where watches are
built in strict compliance with traditional methods as though time had
simply stood still. Only a few of the latter sort continue to operate
today. One of them is the
Montblanc Manufacture, which was formerly the
Miverva Manufacture, at
Villeret in Switzerland’s Jura Region. The past
157 years in
Villeret were characterized by the striving to produce
unique timepieces which embodied complications that were consistently
ahead of their time. These watches were built in accord with traditional
horological methods, so the manufacture remained almost entirely
unaffected by the industrial revolution. Enriched by many years of
traditional expertise, the good old craft of watchmaking predominated
and the foreground was invariably occupied by the watchmakers themselves
rather than by soulless, computer-guided machinery that mindlessly
repeated its assigned chores. This reliance on classical horological
tradition and its pursuit on the highest level are unique features that
distinguish the
Montblanc Manufacture in
Villeret today. Watch
collectors and aficionados are again eagerly seeking precisely these
qualities in technically sophisticated timekeeping mechanisms that have
been crafted in the highest quality and with the utmost meticulousness.
These attributes fully do justice to the true meaning of the word
“luxury” – because limitations at the
Montblanc-
Minerva Manufacture do
not result from mere coincidence, but solely through the exclusive
limits imposed by the annual production capacity.
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TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS
Montblanc Collection Villeret Tourbillon Cylindrique Geosphères Vasco da Gama
Ident.
111675
Movement Montblanc Manufacture Calibre MB M68.40
Type of movement Hand-wound mechanical movement with
one-minute tourbillon and cylindrical hairspring; triple time zone with
local-time, home time and worldtime indication
Dimensions 16¾ lines (38.40 mm); height = 10.50 mm
No. of components 281, including 91 for the tourbillon cage
No. of rubies 18
Power reserve Approx. 48 hours
Balance Screw balance, diameter = 14.5 mm, moment of inertia = 59 mgcm²
Frequency 18,000 semi-oscillations per hour (2.5 Hz)
Hairspring Cylindrical hairspring with double Phillips terminal curves
Tourbillon One-minute tourbillon with cylindrical hairspring
Main plate Rhodium-plated nickel silver with circular graining on both sides
Bridges Rhodium-plated nickel silver with
côtes de Genève
Going-train Gold-plated, faceted arms, diamond-polished surfaces
Watch displays Local time: central hours and minutes in
the centre, Home time: hour hand at “6 o’clock”,
Worldtime: 24-hour
time zones with day/night for the Southern and Northern Hemisphere
Habillage
Case 18-karat red gold (5N)
Crystal Scratch-resistant, domed sapphire crystal with antireflective treatment on both surfaces
Back 18-karat red gold (5N) back with 24 cities of both hemispheres engraved and with inset pane of sapphire crystal
Dimensions Diameter = 47 mm, height = 15.38 mm
Watertightness 3 bar
Dial 18-karat gold hands, hand-guilloché wave
decoration around the tourbillon cage and “grainé” pattern on the lower
part, tourbillon with cylindrical hairspring and double-infinity bridge.
Worldtime indication on two discs with 24-hour time zones with day and
night indication revolving around two fixed globes with traditional
hand-painted
peinture miniature for the oceans and engraving
for the continents and the meridians showing the Northern Hemisphere on
the left and the Southern Hemisphere on the right. Home-time indication
at “6 o’clock” above a three-dimensional handcrafted
rose des vents subdial; 18-karat red gold hour- and minute-hand in the centre, blued “Fleur-de-Lys” home-time hand at “6 o’clock”
Crown 18-karat red gold (5N) crown with
Montblanc’s emblem in mother-of-pearl
Pusher Local-time pusher at “8 o’clock” and home-time corrector at “4 o’clock”
Strap Hand-sewn black alligator-skin strap with alligator lining and with a folding clasp made of 18-karat red gold (5N)
Limitation 18 pieces
Price 250.000 euros including 19% VAT in
Germany
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