Roger Dubuis closes its Merlin trilogy with a hand-carved shapeshifting watch

Roger Dubuis has unveiled the Metamorph Merlin, the closing chapter of a trilogy built around the wizard from Arthurian legend within its Knights of the Round Table collection. The watch is limited to 28 pieces and, for the first time in the line, extends its storytelling from the dial onto the case itself.

That extension is the headline detail. The recessed area of the right case flank is hand-engraved in micro-relief, depicting Merlin in both human form and as a great white stag, the shape he takes according to the legend the brand is drawing on.

According to that mythology, Merlin helps King Uther Pendragon disguise himself as Lady Igraine's husband, Gorlois, so the two can be together, an act that results in the birth of Arthur. As a master of disguise, the wizard rarely appears in his own form and instead shifts between guises, including that of a great white stag.

The left flank carries its own engraving: knights in combat, including a central figure slaying a dragon. Roger Dubuis says the case has never before carried hand-sculpted elements, making the Metamorph the first watch in the collection to move the artistry beyond the dial's surface.

What the dial depicts

The dial keeps the collection's cast of 12 solid rose gold knights, each hand-sculpted and standing 6mm tall, armed with a distinct medieval weapon and animated individually by a master engraver. King Arthur presides at noon, holding the sword Excalibur that gives the wider Roger Dubuis line its name.

A scene built from 57 individually crafted blocks stands behind the knights: polished pink gold, transparent glass and green CVD-coated glass, alongside green-coated Crystalium flooring inlays. The green palette evokes the dense forest where Merlin becomes the stag depicted on the case flank.

Time is told by openworked pink gold hands fitted with green Super-LumiNova inserts, matched to gold markers set on the flange behind the ranked knights. Earlier editions in the trilogy, the Omniscient Merlin and the Enchanter Merlin, established the hexagonal, dimensional dial architecture that the Metamorph now carries forward.

The case and the movement inside it

The case is 45mm across and 16.87mm thick, crafted in pink gold with a protruding sapphire crystal ring beneath a notched bezel that gives a lateral view onto the dial and the knights' backs. A domed sapphire crystal on top floods the scene with light from above.

The crown and its guards are shaped like a sword hilt, a detail carried over from the wider Excalibur family that Roger Dubuis introduced in 2005 with a 45mm watch establishing what the brand calls its Hyper Horology, a language of scale and mechanical audacity that still defines the maison.

A sapphire caseback exposes the automatic movement, the in-house calibre RD821, certified with the Poinçon de Genève. Its skeletonised 360 degree rotor is finished in gold and inspired by stained-glass windows, and it delivers a 48-hour power reserve to the barrel.

The Knights of the Round Table collection itself dates to 2013, when Roger Dubuis conceived it as a showcase for métiers d'art, originally seating 12 micro-sculpted gold knights at a green-and-white Grand Feu enamel round table before the dial evolved into today's abstract, columned compositions.

What the watch ships with and costs

The Metamorph Merlin ships on a green calfskin strap with a pink gold triple-folding buckle, interchangeable through Roger Dubuis's quick-release system. Pricing is available on request only, in keeping with the brand's approach to its most hand-worked, limited pieces.

Roger Dubuis built its reputation on exactly this kind of Hyper Horology, oversized cases, skeletonised movements and hand-finished decoration pushed further than most maisons attempt, a positioning we have tracked as the brand extends storytelling collections like Excalibur and Knights of the Round Table into new territory each year.

The Metamorph's 28 pieces are toward the lower end of the collectible bracket. We noted 12 pieces for Louis Moinet's meteorite-set Moon Meteor and 25 for the debut watch from newcomer Neode, both smaller runs than most established maisons offer.

Collectors drawn to the brand's case architecture can also weigh it against our coverage of watches and jewelry more broadly, where sword-hilt crowns and notched bezels remain among the more distinctive silhouettes we track across the category, alongside Roger Dubuis's own catalogue on Jomashop.

No delivery date or retail rollout has been given beyond the request-only pricing, and Roger Dubuis has not said whether the Metamorph closes the Merlin storyline for good or leaves room for a further figure from the Arthurian cycle to follow inside the wider collection.