Description
Roger Dubuis has closed its Merlin trilogy. After the Omniscient and the Enchanter, "The Metamorph Merlin" takes the wizard's last and strangest attribute — shapeshifting — and makes it the organising idea of an Excalibur Knights of the Round Table. Twenty-eight pieces, 45 mm of 18k pink gold, and the first time in this collection that the storytelling leaves the dial and climbs onto the case itself.
The Knights of the Round Table line has always been Roger Dubuis's métiers d'art showcase rather than its complication showcase, and this watch holds that line: the calibre RD821 inside tells hours and minutes and nothing else. Everything the money buys is above the movement — twelve hand-sculpted pink gold knights standing around a dial built from 57 individually finished hexagonal blocks, and a case that has been hand-engraved in micro-relief with Merlin appearing twice, once as the bearded wizard and once as a white stag.
Price is on request, which at this level of the market is the honest signal that the watch is sold rather than listed.
Design
The 45 mm pink gold case carries the Excalibur signature notched bezel, with a sapphire ring set beneath it so the eye can see into the case flank. A domed anti-reflective sapphire covers the front and an open sapphire caseback the rear. The crown is flanked by guards shaped like a sword hilt and set with a green glass ring — a small detail, but it is the one that ties the case decoration to the dial's colour scheme. On the left flank the engraver has cut a frieze of knights, one of them killing a dragon; in a recessed panel, Merlin himself in micro-relief, mid-transformation into a stag.
The dial is the piece's real work. Twelve knights, each about 6 mm tall, are micro-sculpted in pink gold and given distinct medieval weapons, with King Arthur holding Excalibur at noon. They stand on a floor of 57 hexagonal blocks in seven different treatments: 24 polished glass with a green CVD coating, 10 shotblasted glass with green CVD, 9 transparent glass, 7 polished pink gold, 6 transparent glass with green CVD, and a single central shotblasted pink gold block with green CVD — plus nine green-coated Crystalium inlays laid into the flooring. The flange is green CVD-coated, and the openworked pink gold hands carry green Super-LumiNova. The overall effect is a forest clearing rendered in gold and glass rather than the stone hall the collection has used before.
Specifications
- Model: Excalibur Knights of the Round Table "The Metamorph Merlin"
- Case diameter: 45 mm
- Case thickness: 16.87 mm
- Case material: 18k pink gold, brushed and polished, with hand-engraved micro-relief panels
- Bezel: notched, with a sapphire crystal ring beneath
- Crystal: domed sapphire with anti-reflective treatment
- Caseback: open, sapphire
- Crown: green glass ring, flanked by sword-hilt guards
- Water resistance: 30 m
- Dial: twelve hand micro-sculpted pink gold knights (approx. 6 mm), King Arthur with Excalibur at 12 o'clock; 57 hexagonal blocks in pink gold, transparent glass and green CVD-coated glass; nine green CVD Crystalium flooring inlays; green CVD-coated flange
- Hands: openworked pink gold with green Super-LumiNova
- Movement: calibre RD821, in-house, automatic with central rotor
- Movement dimensions: 25.9 mm × 3.5 mm
- Components: 172
- Jewels: 33
- Frequency: 28,800 vph (4 Hz)
- Power reserve: 48 hours
- Complications: hours and minutes
- Finishing: Poinçon de Genève certified; 14 distinct in-house finishes; skeletonised 360° golden rotor inspired by stained glass
- Strap: green calfskin with quick-release, triple folding pink gold clasp
- Limited edition: 28 pieces
- Price: on request
What's Exciting
The interesting decision here is what Roger Dubuis refused to do. A brand with this much gold and this much engraving budget could easily have hung a tourbillon underneath and charged for both. Instead the RD821 is a two-hand automatic — 172 parts, 48 hours, and a Poinçon de Genève stamp that applies to the whole watch, case included, not just the movement. That hallmark is the reason the restraint is defensible: the Geneva Seal's criteria are about finishing quality across the object, and putting a complication in the way of the dial would have defeated the point of the dial.
Moving the narrative onto the case is the genuine first, and it is a harder craft problem than it sounds. Engraving micro-relief into a finished pink gold case means the engraver is working on a component that cannot be scrapped cheaply and cannot be re-polished afterwards without softening the relief. Doing it as the closing act of a three-watch story, with Merlin caught between two forms, is the kind of idea that reads as clever rather than merely expensive — which is not a sentence one gets to write often at 28 pieces and price-on-request.
History
Roger Dubuis founded his own house in 1995 after twenty-odd years at Patek Philippe, and the Excalibur case — the notched bezel, the exaggerated lugs — arrived in 2005 as the shape the brand has built on ever since. The Knights of the Round Table collection followed in 2013, conceived explicitly as a métiers d'art platform: a dial as a stage, with sculpted figures rather than complications as the attraction. It has been reworked repeatedly in the decade since, in gold, in titanium, with different table surfaces and different castings of the twelve knights.
The Merlin trilogy is the most recent arc within that collection. The Omniscient set out the wizard's knowledge, the Enchanter his magic, and The Metamorph his transformation — closing the sequence in 2026 and, with it, the first sustained multi-watch narrative Roger Dubuis has told inside Knights of the Round Table.
