The workshop
One yard in Hobart, one wedge of wood, more than six hundred dials.
Every dial that leaves this yard was worked out for one garden or one wall before anyone picked up a chisel. That has been true since 2004, when I cut a slate dial for a neighbour whose north wall held the sun all afternoon, working in a rented corner of a boatbuilder's shed with the smell of epoxy in everything.
We moved to the present yard in 2013 and poured our own bronze that same year. The crucible comes up to heat on the first Thursday of each month, and the whole week bends round it. Slate is quieter work, and kinder on the ears.
There is no stock here and no catalogue. Write to hello@meridivo.com and you will hear back within two working days. Tell me where the dial will stand, and the reply will usually carry a price.
The years, 2004-2026
From a Shed Corner to a Yard of Our Own
Twenty-two years, two addresses in the same town, and a bench that has followed the work from one to the other.
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2004
The First Slate Wall Dial
Cut for a neighbour whose north wall caught the sun all afternoon, in a rented corner of a boatbuilder's shed. The hardwood wedge at 42°53′ was cut that winter to check the gnomon, and it has been on the bench ever since.
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2009
The First Bronze Dial, Cast Out of Town
The pattern went away in the back of a ute to be poured by someone else, and came back weeks later to be chased and engraved here. It worked, and it made plain how much of a bronze dial is decided at the pour.
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2013
The Present Yard, and a Pour of Our Own
A move across Hobart to the yard we work from now, and the first bronze poured in our own crucible that same year. Pouring settled into its monthly rhythm on the first Thursday, which is why bronze dials still take 10 to 14 weeks.
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2019
The First Analemmatic Ground Dial
Hour marks set into paving in an ellipse, with a date scale down the middle. A person stands on the right month and becomes the gnomon. Children work it out faster than adults do.
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2026
More Than Six Hundred Dials
Each one set out for a single garden, wall or courtyard, from 300 mm slate to 600 mm armillary spheres, and every gnomon angled for the latitude of the place it was going.
Materials
Four Materials, Chosen to Outlast the Garden
A dial is meant to stand in one place for a century, through salt air, frost and Hobart's sideways rain. Nothing goes on one that will flake, fade or need replacing in ten years.
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Poured first Thursday · 10-14 weeks
Silicon Bronze
Melted from fresh ingot and the workshop's own offcuts, so a little of every earlier dial goes into the next. It takes engraving crisply and weathers from gold to a deep brown-green. Nothing larger than 1.2 m across goes in one casting, because that is the limit of the crucible.
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From 300 mm square · 5-6 weeks
Blue-Grey Slate
Dense, fine-grained and quiet to cut. Engraved lines hold a sharp edge and stay legible without paint. Most wall dials are slate, from AUD $680 for a north-facing wall.
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900 mm pedestal · AUD $950
Tasmanian Sandstone
The honey-coloured stone that half of old Hobart is built from. It carries garden dials at a comfortable reading height and softens beside bronze as the lichen finds it.
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Fixings on every dial
Stainless Steel Pins
Every dial is pinned into stone or masonry with stainless steel set in, never screwed to a surface. A dial that has moved by a degree is a dial that tells the wrong time.
You will not find resin, plastic or powder-coated imitation bronze here, and no electronics, lights or clock movements hidden in a plinth. The shadow does the work.
Lettering and numerals
Four Strokes for Four O'Clock, and Mottoes That Survive the Rain
People ask about the four strokes more than about anything else on a dial. We always cut IIII, never IV, and I will defend it at length. Partly it is balance: IIII sits across the face from VIII, and the two heaviest numerals weigh against each other so the chapter ring does not tip to one side. Partly it is a habit borrowed from the old clockmakers, who cut IIII on their dials for centuries while the stonemasons up the road argued for IV, and I learnt from people who sided with the clocks. A customer once argued hard for IV, quite reasonably, because that was what they had been taught at school, so I drew the face both ways on the setting-out sheet; they looked at the two drawings for a long minute at the drawing stage and chose the four strokes without my saying another word. Mottoes follow the same instinct for weight. Under eight words, the letters can be cut deeper and set wider apart, and Tasmanian rain, which comes sideways off the Derwent for half the year, finds less to fill with grit and lichen, whereas a long motto in small letters is usually a green smudge by its tenth winter. The motto I would choose for my own garden is five words, for the ten minutes and forty-one seconds a Hobart dial runs behind the clock, and it has been pencilled on a slate offcut on the bench for longer than I like to admit without my ever getting round to cutting it.
The same sun, a little late.Mottoes are cut in Roman capitals by default, in English, Latin or any language you can spell out for us letter by letter. Send yours with the first enquiry and it goes on the setting-out drawing, so you see it at full size before anything is cut.
The bench
Three Things That Never Leave the Bench
Most of the tools in the yard are ordinary. These three are not, and the first is the oldest thing in the workshop.
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The 42°53′ wedgeHardwood, cut 2004, worn smooth by hands · every Hobart gnomon is checked against it before it leaves -
The brass protractorFor every latitude but this one · Brisbane, Perth and Dunedin dials are set out with it -
The plumb bobHung against a wall at solar noon, with the shadow of the line telling us the wall's bearing
The wedge sits by the vice where it can be reached without looking. A new gnomon is offered up against it, and if light shows under the style edge, it goes back to the file. The plumb bob travels to every survey within 60 km of Hobart, at AUD $120 credited in full against an order.