he Montblanc Iced Sea Automatic Date 0 Oxygen Limited Edition 700 features a striking dial embedded with fragments of ancient wood, often millennia old, that have been preserved while trapped in glacial ice. 

Over centuries, the slow movement of glaciers has carved some of Earth’s most stunning geological features. As glaciers form and recess, they expose and relocate fertile soil. In the process, many of the felled trees become preserved as subfossils and are pushed into a glacier’s moraine, the dense mass of sediment a glacier deposits at its outer edge.

To create this complexly layered dial, Montblanc’s watchmakers first worked with mountaineers in France’s Chamonix valley to source subfossil wood from the Mer de Glace’s moraine. The sourced wood is then cut into shavings and arranged in a seemingly random, yet carefully distributed, array. The result is a natural-seeming pattern of scattered subfossil wood. 

Next, a transparent resin is applied over the wood shavings, thus forming a sheet from which the dial is made. Finally, this resin surface is treated with a frozen finish that mimics the look of striated crystalline patterns of ice.

The Montblanc Iced Sea Automatic Date 0 Oxygen Limited Edition 700 frames its wood and ice-effect dial with a feature-rich brown ceramic bezel, further distinguished by its laser-lowered section of textured ceramic between the 0- and 15-minute markers. Its 41mm stainless steel case, fitted with Montblanc’s 0 Oxygen technology, allows the watch to withstand the demands of high-pressure underwater.

At the heart of this timepiece is Montblanc’s Calibre MB 24.17, that offers approximately 38 hours of power reserve, beating at 4Hz.

Price: CHF 5,100

www.montblanc.com