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Our history
For 30 years now, the Meylan family has represented the finest watch and jewelry brands in the heart of the lakeside town of Vevey.
Sharing, passing on and respect are the watchwords of Lionel Meylan, founder of the watchmaking and jewelry business, and his sons Julien and Yannick.
First and foremost, they share their passion and knowledge with their customers every day. The transmission of tradition, which they inscribe in their universe, where a skilful blend of traditional and modern watchmaking reigns supreme. And finally, respect for the customer and for beautiful objects, in complete transparency.
The family
Yannick Meylan
Management
Yannick Meylan
Management
Lionel’s eldest son fell into clockmaking as a child. As a child, Yannick spent most of his free time watching his father restore antique clocks. It’s an activity he practiced himself at the start of his career, when he had just completed the Ecole des Métiers in precision mechanics, supplemented by studies in commerce and management. Today, Yannick runs the company jointly with his brother, Julien, and divides his time between the Vevey boutiques and Glacier 3000, the highest watchmaking boutique in French-speaking Switzerland. But don’t be fooled into thinking that the ticking of watches is the only thing that makes this adventurer tick. In addition to his passion for aviation, which he satisfies by regularly flying over the Alps in a helicopter or plane, he loves simple pleasures: bivouacking in the forest with his two boys, his Doberman Oban and genuine human relationships.
Associated stores
Julien Meylan
Management
Julien Meylan
Management
For Lionel’s youngest son, the love of watchmaking came naturally. Nothing could be more natural when you spend your childhood surrounded by complex cogs and magnificent mechanisms… His studies at the Ecole d’horlogerie de la Vallée de Joux confirmed to Julien that the profession ran in his veins.
Today, he runs the company jointly with his brother, Yannick. His greatest pleasure? Spending time with customers to advise them, making himself available to sketch a ring or pendant to create a bespoke piece of jewelry, repair a watchband or carry out a quick service for a customer in a hurry. In short, Julien goes out of his way to be of service. But his legendary calm and energy at work are matched only by his coolness when it comes to the sports he enjoys: hiking in the mountains in summer, skiing in winter and skydiving all year round!
Associated stores
Lionel Meylan
Founder
Lionel Meylan
Founder
Watchmaker title
The watchmaking towns of the Vaud region - Nyon, Rolle, Morges, Lausanne, Vevey and Moudon - employ around a hundred workers who make ébauches for the metropolis of Geneva. It wasn't until 1723, when the Bernese granted each watchmaking town a master's degree, that the Vaudois were able to call themselves watchmakers. This master's degree regulated the profession very strictly and guaranteed corporation members a monopoly on their art; watchmakers soon formed a veritable aristocracy. The first combier watchmakers appeared in the early 18th century.
The first manufacturers
These are some of the most talented iron craftsmen - cutlers, gunsmiths, etc. - who make crude Franc-Comtois-style weight clocks. - some of the most talented iron craftsmen in the world, who made crude Franc-Comtois-style weight clocks. The initiators were the Golays; Moïse and Isaac built the clock for the Sentier temple in 1737. Samuel-Olivier Meylan, son of Jean-Baptiste, a resident of Chez-le-Maître, was the first watchmaker in the Vallée de Joux. He probably came from a family of blacksmiths.
Samuel-Olivier
Becoming a watchmaker is no mean feat. According to the master's regulations, you had to complete a five-year apprenticeship with a master, work for three years as a craftsman, and finally present a watch built entirely by your own hands, the masterpiece, on the basis of which a jury would decide whether to award you the watchmaker's patent, which alone gave you the right to have an apprentice or a craftsman.
Samuel-Olivier left the Vallée in 1740, finding an apprenticeship with Mathieu Biaudet in Rolle, from whom he left three years later to settle in his own village. He no doubt felt he knew enough, since, flouting the rules, he took on the David brothers as apprentices in 1743, and Pierre Golay in 1746.
Watchmaker title
However, he was indicted by the Rolle master craftsman's guild and had to regularize his status; he didn't officially become a watchmaker until 1748, when the Moudon master craftsman's guild accepted his masterpiece, which he had made in the Principality of Neuchâtel.
Watchmaking mastery
The absence of a guild in the Vallée was a major handicap for aspiring watchmakers, in that they were obliged to spend eight years abroad to acquire their title, and to bear the considerable cost of their upkeep. At the request of Samuel-Olivier, LL. EE. On February 5, 1749, the Combiers were released from their obligations to the master craftsmen until there were enough of them (seven masters) to form one in Le Chenit. A year after Samuel-Olivier's death, in 1756, the Bernese government granted a watchmaking master's degree to Le Chenit.
These masteries had two aims. On the one hand, they were supposed to guarantee the quality of watchmaking, which they were never able to do, and, on the other, they were supposed to benefit the country and them (the watchmakers) in particular (Maîtrise de Rolle, 1723), which on the other hand, they succeeded in doing, as the masters rapidly grew rich. The watchmaker, on the other hand, barely made a living from his many hours of work, and derived no benefit from these regulations, which served only to stifle isolated industrial endeavors and impede progress (Marcel Piguet, op. cit.).
The abolition of master's degrees
The abolition of master craftsmen's guilds, removing the obligation for watchmakers to build a complete watch, ushered in the era of the division of labor, which was to turn the lives of Combiers upside down. Small, family-run businesses sprang up, specializing in one part of the watchmaking process. Finished watches were no longer produced, making access to the profession much easier. Although the division of labor implied a certain deskilling and less interesting work (repetition of the same gestures), it rationalized it, increased production capacity, lowered manufacturing costs and heralded the industrial production of mass-produced watches. The Combiers practiced it to such an extent that by the end of the 19th century, there were over fifty watchmaking companies in the Vallée, a minority of which produced finished watches. The period of scarcity was over, and the watch brought by Samuel-Olivier enabled the future Vallée district to achieve unhoped-for prosperity.
Philippe-Samuel Meylan
There was no shortage of remarkable watchmakers during the two and
a half centuries of watchmaking in Le Brassus. Not all were Meylans, of course, but the most outstanding early 19th-century watchmaker was Philippe-Samuel Meylan.
Philippe-Samuel was born in Le Brassus on February 15, 1772, and died in Geneva on April 3, 1845. His father, Henri, was said to be a locksmith of genius (secret locks), and Philippe-Samuel was even more brilliant in his field.
His domain, in fact, encompasses everything to do with precision mechanics: his watches are one-of-a-kind, and his automata are no match for those of the great Jaquet Droz. The automaton that constitutes his masterpiece is a marvelous grotto from which a monk emerges, strikes the rock and answers in writing one of twenty-eight choice questions, deposited by the spectator in a drawer (Marcel Piguet, op. cit.). He built white mice that ran, stopped and ran again, ending their run with a jump or a swerve (id.). He made pistols that contained a watch in the butt, and whose trigger let out a songbird from the barrel. The almost complete collection of his automata was bought by an Australian; the boat was wrecked and the marvellous works it contained lay at the bottom of the Indian Ocean.
He made extra-flat watches called "montres-monnaies", and succeeded in inserting the mechanism of a watch into an old twenty-franc coin. This tour de force was made possible by his "bagnolet" invention, which reversed the movement layout.
He produced a large number of skeleton-watches, i.e. watches with two visible plates engraved with designs of flowers and intertwined plants; the mechanism is also visible, and the pivots turn at the center of the flowers or at the intersection of the stems.
He was the first to equip watches with sounding blades and the mechanism to make them vibrate, and it was he who invented the alarm ring, a ring fitted with a tiny watch whose mechanism makes a steel point penetrate the finger at the desired time.
Piguet et Meylan in Geneva
In 1811, together with Isaac Piguet, he founded the Piguet et Meylan firm in Geneva, which was one of the most important in the city until 1828, when the partners separated. Earlier, in Le Brassus, he had worked with another Piguet, Charles-Auguste. It was he who trained Louis Audemars and enabled him to settle in La Vallée; it was from Louis' family that Audemars, Piguet & Cie was born, which today is the world's most renowned prestige watch manufacturer.
In Geneva, Piguet et Meylan specialized in luxury automaton and music watches, decorated in the "Genevoise" style; the two partners were masters of the genre and produced Chinese watches, most of which were gold, enamelled and pearl-set pieces destined for Chinese export.
A lineage of tradition and diversification
His son, François (1800-1882), continued his father's work, while his
second son, Hector, tried his hand at painting. After two generations of stockbrokers, Philippe-Samuel's family is still present in Geneva through the fourth generation, represented by Yvonne, born in 1913, through the fifth, represented by Jacques, born in 1929, a gynecologist like his father (René, 1902-1968), and through the sixth, formed by Jacques' three children.
Although Philippe-Samuel's descendants have abandoned their ancestor's profession, there are still a few watchmakers in French-speaking Switzerland with the Meylan name to bear witness to their ancestors' work.
