A drawing office that happens to print.
Meridian publishes one volume at a time. Each volume is a set of drawings held together by a single subject, printed in one ink on a blank we would wear ourselves, and made only after somebody asks for it.
The note
We started by drawing the instruments.
The first plate was a Fresnel lens — a cutaway of the thing that lets a lighthouse throw a small flame twenty miles out to sea. We drew it because we wanted it on a wall, and it ended up on a shirt because a shirt is the cheapest way to put a drawing in front of people.
Volume I collects eight of them: a lens, a drum, a balloon, a mirror, a chart, a core, a great circle, an aperture. All eight are objects built for one purpose — to measure something that will not hold still. That is the whole idea, and when it stops being the idea the volume closes.
There is no season here, no drop calendar and no restock anxiety. A volume stays open while it stays open.
01 — Making
How a plate becomes a garment
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Step 01
Reference
Every plate starts from a real technical document — a patent elevation, an instrument cutaway, a survey chart. We work from the original geometry rather than an illustration of it, so the proportions stay honest even when the detail is dropped.
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Step 02
Redraw
The drawing is rebuilt line by line at print scale. Anything that cannot survive being pressed into cotton at 300 dpi is removed — hairlines under 0.6 pt, halftones that would fill in, text below 6 pt. A plate usually loses a third of its detail here, and reads better for it.
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Step 03
Separate to one ink
Each plate is separated to a single colour and paired with the one garment shade it sits best on. One ink, one pass. If a drawing needs four colours to be interesting, it is not finished, and it does not go in the volume.
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Step 04
Print, after you order
Your order routes to the print floor closest to your address — the United States or the European Union. Water-based ink, cured at 165 °C so it sits in the fibre rather than on a plastic layer above it. Two to four business days to make, then it ships.
The blank
240 grams, and nothing on the neck.
We print on heavyweight ring-spun cotton with a boxy body and a wide shoulder — the kind of blank that holds its shape after a year rather than a season. Garment dyed, so the colour sits in the fibre instead of on top of it. The only label inside is a printed size mark.
Three weights across the volume, one standard: nothing goes in that we would not wear twice a week.
02 — Production
Made after you order it, near where you live.
Nothing is warehoused and nothing is destroyed at the end of a season. A US order is printed in the US, an EU order in the EU — which means no customs charge waiting on your doorstep, and a parcel that travels hundreds of miles instead of thousands.
03 — Sizing
Measured flat, in inches and centimetres
Chest is measured across the garment from underarm to underarm — double it for the full circumference. Length runs from the highest point of the shoulder to the hem. Allow 1 cm of tolerance either way.
Fit
Between sizes? The body is cut wide — take the smaller size for a conventional fit, the larger for the intended boxy one.
04 — Information
Shipping, returns, and us
Every order is printed after it is placed. The windows below are the ones our print floor commits to, measured from the moment you order to the moment it is handed over — production is already inside them, so there is nothing to add on top.
Thirty days from delivery, unworn and unwashed, with the printed size mark intact. We pay return postage inside the US and the EU — email us and a prepaid label comes back within one business day. Outside those two regions the return is at your cost.
Exchanges are handled as a return plus a new order, because the replacement has to be printed from scratch. That is faster than it sounds: the refund is issued when the parcel is scanned by the carrier, not when it reaches us.
If a print is misaligned, cracked on arrival, or the wrong plate entirely — that is on us. Send a photograph and we reprint it, no return required.
Machine wash cold, inside out, with like colours. Tumble dry low or hang. Do not iron directly on the print, and skip the fabric softener — it coats the fibre and dulls a water-based ink faster than washing ever will.
Garment-dyed cotton settles in the first two washes. Expect a small amount of shrinkage in length and a softening of the shade; both are the point.
One inbox, read by the people who draw the plates: studio@meridianplate.com. We answer within one business day, and we answer questions about the drawings as gladly as questions about a parcel.
- StudioMeridian Supply Co.
- HoursMon–Fri, 09:00–17:00 CET
- PressSame address — put “Press” in the subject line
Volume I — Instruments
Eight plates, open now.
Printed to order in the US and the EU. Free shipping over $120, thirty days to change your mind.
Shop Volume I