A tourbillon, a moonphase, a minute repeater and a perpetual calendar — four hundred and twelve parts, reconciled into one open-worked movement. Watch it assemble.
Every complication begins on a single skeletonized mainplate, milled from German silver and chamfered entirely by hand. Its bridges are anglaged to a mirror sheen, holding the whole architecture to a tolerance of two microns.
A single barrel stores seventy-two hours of energy in a spring drawn to 0.11 mm. Its slow, even release is the quiet heartbeat from which every indication on the dial is timed.
Four wheels transmit force across jewelled pivots polished to a thousandth of a millimetre. Each tooth profile is computed to surrender almost nothing to friction as torque travels toward the escapement.
Here energy is parcelled into discrete beats. The Swiss lever locks and releases the train 28,800 times an hour, the balance breathing against a hairspring matched to it by hand.
The regulating organ turns once per minute within a cage of forty-seven parts weighing under three-tenths of a gram. By rotating the balance through every vertical position, it averages out the errors gravity would impose.
A lacquered disc tracks the synodic month to a deviation of a single day in 122 years. The moon is drawn in rhodium against a darkened sky — set once, then left for a lifetime.
An open-worked dial reveals the movement beneath while a snailed chapter ring orders the minutes. Indices are cut, polished and set individually, each catching the light at precisely the same angle.
Hands are sculpted from hardened steel, beveled and mirror-polished in a single uninterrupted pass. Poised and counter-balanced, they glide without a tremor across the face.
A 41 mm case is carved from a solid billet, its fluted bezel indexed by hand. Hermetic and water-resistant, it seals the complication within a vessel finished to the standard of the movement it protects.
“A grande complication is not assembled. It is reconciled — every part conceding a little, until the whole keeps time.”
The Méridien is released as twenty-eight numbered pieces, each delivered in person at the atelier in Genève. We invite you to a private viewing, where the movement may be observed under loupe before commission.
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