The very cool thing about Qlocktwo’s timepieces is that they spell out the time every five minutes using a typographic indication with letters: so instead of “7:30,” the time on a Qlocktwo “dial” quite literally reads “it is half past seven.” Sabine Zwettler finds this eminently intriguing!
Elizabeth Doerr has a personal relationship with Scotland. And with Edinburgh in particular. But she hadn’t visited the fabulous National Museum of Scotland there before. Finally ducking in on a recent trip, she was blown away by the incredible Millennium Clock Tower. Here she explores the tower’s history, meaning, and symbolism.
The de Fossard Solar Time Clock isn’t so much a clock but a time-telling sculpture because it unites the past, present, and future in a single object. Its design is rather futuristic, almost timeless, and the same can be said of the mechanics, but rather than reaching into the future like the design, they go back to the heyday of clockmaking.
The ‘perpetual’ Atmos by Jaeger-LeCoultre is made even more interesting by collaborations with celebrated designer Marc Newson; the Swiss manufacture and the Australian designer have done three Atmos variations together. I had a chance to speak with Newson upon the release of the latest collaborative clock, the Atmos 568. And some of his answers to my eager questions were a bit surprising.
250 years ago, Longitude Prize-winning clockmaker John Harrison made clocks losing just one second per month, but that wasn’t enough for him. In his later life, Harrison claimed that he could make a wall clock with a then-unheard-of-precision of just one second over 100 days! And 250 years later, it turns out he was right.
The skull is one of art history’s most referenced objects thanks to its powerful ability to instantly remind us that we are only flesh and bone. Fiona Krüger, specializing in skulls, has now partnered with L’Epée 1839 to produce Vanitas, a skull-shaped clock based on her Skull Collection with an unexpected function: it yawns as its movement tires.
Given Panerai’s origins in Florence, it should come as no surprise that the Italian watchmaker created a horological tribute to the insatiably curious father of modern science Galileo Galilei, who was once a resident of the Renaissance city. The Jupiterium is a one-of-a-kind geocentric planetarium with perpetual calendar.
Imagine a rejuvenated grandfather clock or a massive art installation coming to life with steady sounds and the rhythmic movement of a pendulum. This poetic notion is the essence of the Time Machines (“Zeitmaschinen”) created by Swiss artist and engineer Florian Schlumpf. And they are mesmerizing.
Clocks may seem old-fashioned – until you get a load of what L’Epée 1839 is capable of. And as a watch enthusiast, you have probably also already seen a few of this company’s clock co-productions with MB&F’s wild robots and other personality-laden timepieces. L’Epée 1839 has a surprising history as a supplier of escapements, too, as The Watches TV’s Marc-André Deschoux found out. Sit back and watch!
I absolutely love negative space. And now MB&F has now created a piece where the viewer’s imagination plays as important a role as the largely empty physical structure. That creation is Destination Moon, a rocket-shaped clock made in collaboration with L’Epée 1839.