I wanted to tell you a bit more about my handmade clock designs and some of the history behind them.
I start with the animal, by gathering some photos or other references, and then imagine what shapes and colours I see working together. I really like the look and the feel of having text and visuals together. I see the design in my mind’s eye, knowing what shapes I want to use to look harmonious. That sounds easy, but then I have to make them in metal, with all the limitations and technical issues that involves.
My two fish clocks were some of my earliest designs.
I am the first to point out that the fish are illogically flying through the sky, out of the water above the waves. I loved the idea of having fish at the top of the design on wires, so you can really see their shapes. And I wanted to have the curly wave shapes, it’s just how I saw it in my mind, so the fish have to fly. I searched for a suitable quote, then just wrote “Waves rustle and fish fly” cos that’s what’s happening!
The turquoise blue colour of the metal makes me think of sea and sky, summer, freedom. I found I wanted to use that colour more and more.
The bees clock uses the same idea of creatures flying over the clock on wires. I don’t know why the main red copper part is shaped like a cloud, it just looked right, as the rounded shapes echo the shapes of the bees.
The text is from a writer called Isaac Watts, his 1715 “Divine Songs,” a collection of moralistic verse for children. This poem beginning -“How doth the little busy bee, improve each shining hour” was well known in the 19th century, tediously drummed into children no doubt, and parodied by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland as “How doth the little crocodile, improve his shining tail..” A bit of my English literature BA coming in useful. Of course, now we know bees’ constant work keeps our world turning. I think these are wild bumble bees.
My Fox clock is one of my favourites, as he is rather jaunty and adventurous looking, and the design looks really balanced. The text is a song many of us know. All my rural childhood I saw the huntsmen often, but I never saw a fox. I had to go to Peckham as an adult to see them properly! But they are out there, our secret neighbours, in the gardens and fields we think of as our territory. At night the garden belongs to other creatures.
A few years ago my lovely little cat Kitten died. She was nearly 23! She had been with me through so much of my life, and in her last year I designed two clocks for her. This one has the text “Time to stand and stare,” and was inspired by seeing her in the garden, never going far away, and whenever I looked up she seemed to be staring at me in a slightly accusing way. Perhaps just thinking about dinner. I felt very bonded with her.
I did make a dog clock by request in similar vein to the smaller Cat clock, but it’s a different task entirely as dogs are all such different shapes! Open to trying though.
And all my other designs involve birds! They have such great shapes, you can play with the images and still keep them recognisably avian.
It’s important to me that all of these animals have not only some humour but also a sense of freedom when I represent them. They are all just doing their own thing. I have refused requests for birds in cages or any reference to circus animals on clocks. My Fox is nosing through the night entirely on his own terms, and the Hummingbird embodies freedom in it’s speed and lightness of being.
I have always donated to the RSPCA and nature charities so I guess nature and animals are pretty important to me, and as I have used the word freedom several times in writing this you can see I am conjuring a colourful world where birds and animals rule!