As I hinted at in another thread, I had the pleasure of attending an event in NYC a little over a week ago. The event was sponsored by Wempe and held at Eleven Madison Park, a lovely restaurant adjacent the Flatiron Building. The guest of honor was Jerome Lambert, CEO of Montblanc. It was a rather intimate affair, with 16 guests, a handful of Wempe and Montblanc representatives, and, of course, Mr. Lambert.

Mr. Lambert was named CEO of Montblanc in 2013 following his leadership of 12 years as CEO of Jaeger-LeCoultre. To give an indication of Mr. Lambert's abilities, he became head of JLC at the age of 33. While he helmed JLC, he also supervised A. Lange & Sohne. Needless to say, his appointment as CEO of Montblanc should have signaled great things for the company.

Montblanc is a relative newcomer in the world of watchmaking, having introduced its watch line in 1997. The watch atelier of Montblanc was created by Thierry Pellaton, a name that should be familiar to fans of IWC. In 2006, Richemont purchased famed movement manufacturer Minerva. One interesting piece of trivia shared to us by Mr. Lambert prior to the start of the evening: Richemont was not sure at first where to incorporated Minerva and Panerai was one of the top choices. If that scenario had played out, I would imagine Panerai would have either moved in a much different direction than it has today, or the imagination of the watchmakers at Minerva would have been stifled (more on that below).

Between courses of our five-course dinner, Mr. Lambert talked about watchmaking at Montblanc and the watches were passed around for us to handle and admire up close.

The high end watches are made using traditional techniques. The collection of watches housing Minerva movements is beyond exclusive. Each watchmaker is responsible for individual watches. Not only are they part of its development, but the watchmaker is in charge of its assembly during manufacturing, as well as any servicing. In other words, you can rest assured knowing that when you send your watch in for servicing, it will be worked by the very same watchmaker responsible for putting it together in the first place. In one of the photos below, you will see that the inside of the case back bears the name of the watchmaker that assembled it.

One thing that was made abundantly clear, Montblanc is and will continue to be a force to be reckoned with in the world of high horology. Mr. Lambert is both passionate and knowledgable about watchmaking. He knew every detail about every watch that was shown that evening and his excitement for the watches was palpable. I expect to see (more) great things coming out of Montblanc and would urge everyone to pay a bit more attention to what they are doing.

I will continue updating this thread with pictures and narrative as I have time.

For now, I will leave you with some photos of our host and images of the evening's setting.





And a sneak peek at things to come.