Pornography, for the chronofile.
You probably have a clock obsessive or two in your life. Perhaps you are one yourself. You could be the type of person who coordinates a trip to the clock section of a department store with the noon hour for an auditory fix of cuckoo sounds. You might simply be really into clocks. This does not make you or your loved one(s) cuckoo, in turn. Rather, a collector of an exacting sort: a chronofile.
Industrial designer and one of the founders of American Modernism George Nelson gets you. When writing about his 50-year career, during which time he made lots of clocks, he described it as a progression of creative “zaps,” timeless moments “when the solitary individual finds he is connected with a reality he never dreamed of.” Instances punctuated with every chime, bong, whir, click and shininess of an analog dial.
Exemplified below, the hands of time keeping the same continuum. For most of us, they are pretty clocks, some renowned as perennial timepieces of modernist design. But the chronofile sees something else: the continuance of time registering at its individual pitch.
Re-edition of the original 1948-1960 Ball Clock by American Modernist George Nelson, as presented by The Vitra Design Museum.
Designed by brothers Humberto and Fernando Campana of Fratelli Campana, a touch of Brazilian modern fusing “pandemonium with poetry.”
The Eye Wall Clock, another George Nelson, from The Vitra Design Museum.
The Polygon Wall Clock.
Martí Guixé’s Alessi 24h Sentence Maker Wall Clock.
Vitra Limited Edition Ball Clock.
Kikkerland Talking Kim Alarm Clock by tinker, inventor, designer, humorist David Dear.
Also by Dear, the Fly Clock, reinvented from a flyswatter.
Ashley Sargeant’s Orange22 Blink Clock.
Vitra Night Clock.
Nuevo Mega Clock.
Scale 1:1 Bolla Global Clock Kit.