Since 1962 every Meridian movement has been regulated against a single brass meridian rule in our Geneva atelier. Sixty-four years later, the rule has not moved. Neither has our patience.
The in-house Calibre M-62, finished by hand, beating at 28,800 vibrations per hour.
Every watch is assembled by a single watchmaker, start to finish, whose initials are engraved inside the caseback.
Production is fixed. It has been nine hundred pieces since 1974, and it will remain nine hundred.
A Meridian is one hundred and forty-one components arranged around a single axis. Scroll, and the watch will open itself — layer by layer — the way it lies on the watchmaker's bench at seven in the morning.
Côtes de Genève on the bridges, perlage on the mainplate, black-polished screw heads. None of it improves the timekeeping. All of it is the point.
Fifteen days of observation in six positions and three temperatures before a movement is cased. Mean deviation across the collection last year: +1.8 seconds per day.
The atelier has moved twice, both times within the same street. The brass rule set into the first workbench in 1962 has travelled with it, and every Meridian is still regulated against it.
Élise Marchand, a regleuse dismissed for being "too slow," opens a two-person atelier and sets a brass meridian rule into her bench. Slowness becomes the house method.
During the quartz crisis, Meridian refuses to scale down or up. Annual production is fixed at nine hundred pieces — a number chosen because it was what four watchmakers could finish honestly.
The 36 mm Meridian Line debuts: sunburst dial, dauphine hands, a single hairline of rose gold at six o'clock. The design has changed by 0.4 mm since.
After nine years of development, the first fully in-house calibre. Its ratchet wheel carries a micro-engraved meridian — invisible without a loupe, and non-negotiable.
A galvanic deep-green sunburst, developed for a single client and then, after four years of requests, admitted into the collection. It remains the slowest dial to produce.
For the first time, clients compose their own Meridian — case, dial, strap — before a watchmaker signs it. Nine hundred a year. Still.
Reservations are answered personally, in order of arrival, within five working days. A deposit is requested only once a watchmaker has been assigned.
17 Rue du Rhône, 1204 Genève
By appointment, Tuesday to Saturday
8 Place Vendôme, 75001 Paris
11h — 19h, closed Mondays
The Dubai Mall, Fashion Avenue
10h — 22h daily