Meissner & Fils · Haute Horlogerie · Est. 1987
Calibre Nº 9
One calibre a year, for nine years. This is the ninth — eighty-two hours of stored time, beating at four hertz on a bed of seventeen garnets.
I · The mainplate
Everything rests on German silver.
The mainplate is cut from maillechort — German silver — and left unplated, so it takes on the colour of its years. Its surface carries 641 hand-applied perles, each circle overlapping the last by exactly half. Seventeen bearings are jewelled in garnet, set in gold chatons and secured with three screws apiece.
II · The going train
Eight turns for every one.
Power leaves the barrel through four gearings, each cut to the same ratio: every wheel turns eight times for one revolution of the wheel before it. The arithmetic is unfashionable — 8:1 asks for a deeper tooth and stricter depthing — but it is what gives the train its silence.
III · The escapement
691,200 conversations a day.
Eight times a second the pallet fork unlocks the escape wheel, steals a push, and hands it to the balance. The pallet stones are garnet rather than ruby — the founder’s stubbornness, and the reason a Meissner ticks a half-tone lower than any other watch you own.
IV · The balance
Four hertz, free-sprung.
The balance breathes at 28,800 vibrations per hour, regulated by four gold masselottes instead of an index — nothing touches the hairspring but its own stud. The spring is drawn in-house and blued at 290 °C over a brass pan. Amplitude, dial-up: 305 degrees.
V · The whole
233 parts, one intention.
Assembled, adjusted in five positions, cased — and then, this is the part nobody believes, taken entirely apart, cleaned, and assembled a second time. The second assembly is the one you own. Nine will be made. There is no tenth.
Every surface is finished by hand · including the fourteen no one will ever see ·
Finishing · 640 hours per movement
The hand
Anglage
Forty-one metres of bevels, drawn with a boxwood peg and gentian paste, every inward angle sharpened to a point no machine can enter. Six of the movement’s weeks are spent here.
Poli noir
The pallet cock is polished flat on tin until it reflects either pure black or pure white — nothing between. One slip of the wrist and the piece is remade, not repaired.
Perlage & côtes
Applied on machines older than the house itself: a 1952 pantograph for the stripes, a hand-cranked spindle for the perles. The pattern is set once, by eye, and never marked out.
Hallmarked at the bench
Specifications
- Calibre
- Nº 9 « Neuf »
- Dimensions
- 32.00 mm × 4.20 mm
- Frequency
- 4 Hz · 28,800 vph
- Power reserve
- 82 hours
- Jewels
- 17 · garnet, gold chatons
- Components
- 233
- Winding
- Manual · 68 clicks, full
- Train ratio
- 8:1 throughout
- Finishing
- 640 hours, by hand
- Production
- 9 pieces · 2026
- Guarantee
- The lifetime of the maker
L’Auberson · Jura vaudois · 1,110 m
The atelier
Two benches under a north window, above the fog line. Elias Meissner has kept the left one since 1987; his son Aurel took the right in 2011, which is when & Fils was added to the door and nothing else changed.
One calibre is designed, cut, finished, and regulated here each year. When it is done, the drawings are bound, the tooling is retired to the cellar, and the next page is blank. The atelier does not receive visitors; the work does not survive an audience.
- BenchesTwo — walnut, north-lit
- LatheSchaublin 70, 1961
- PantographLienhard, 1952
- Calibres to dateNine
- EmployeesNone
- WebsiteThis one, reluctantly
Edition of nine
Nine pieces. Then the drawings are bound.
Calibre Nº 9 is cased in tantalum, 38.5 mm, under a grand-feu enamel dial the colour of the silver you are reading this on. Two of the nine are already promised. Allocation is by letter — paper, not email — and the reply may take a season.
Correspondence
Meissner & Fils, horlogers
Atelier 3 · Rue de la Gare 14
1454 L’Auberson · Vaud · Suisse
Letters are answered in the order received,
in ink, on the first quiet morning.