What Montblanc is known for

Montblanc began in Hamburg in 1906 as the Simplo Filler Pen Company and introduced its Meisterstück pen in 1924, its nib stamped 4810 for Mont Blanc's height in metres. Since 2006 it has also run a Swiss watchmaking manufacture in Villeret, built on the acquired Minerva atelier.

Montblanc traces its origin to 1906, when Hamburg banker Alfred Nehemias and Berlin engineer August Eberstein set out to build a more reliable fountain pen and founded the Simplo Filler Pen Company. The Montblanc name followed a year later, reportedly settled on during a card game, and by 1913 the company had trademarked the white star meant to evoke the snow-capped peak of Mont Blanc. By the end of the 1920s the brand's pens were sold in more than sixty countries.

The house's signature model, the Meisterstück, launched in 1924. Its nib carries the engraving 4810, the mountain's height in metres, a detail that has stayed on the pen for a century as a fixed marker of the brand's origin story. The Meisterstück remains Montblanc's flagship line and the reference point against which the rest of its writing-instrument catalog is measured.

Montblanc's ambitions extended beyond pens in the 2000s. In 2006 the Richemont-owned house acquired the manufacture and archives of Minerva, a Villeret, Switzerland watchmaker founded in 1858, along with its historical calibres, tooling and headquarters. The acquired site was renamed the Minerva Institute for High Watchmaking Research in 2007 and became Montblanc's center for in-house movement development, sitting alongside its main watch and leather-goods operations. The result is a company whose Hamburg pen heritage now runs in parallel with a genuine Swiss watchmaking manufacture, rather than a badge-engineered add-on.