In pictures: Their best faces: Nine wall clocks reimagined
Clock designers are taking time pieces from near-relics to art.
<b>CONCEPT ART</b></br> Whether it’s time for Love, Food, Art or, most intriguingly, Vibration, Marti Guixé’s 15.75-inch, white-aluminum 24 Hour Sentence Maker Wall Clock for Alessi covers a wide range of ways you might choose to spend an hour. $214 at Alessi in Montreal (514-316-4560) and Bergo Designs in Toronto (www.bergo.ca).
<b>OPTICAL ALLUSION</b></br> Continually oscillating optical interference patterns dance across the face of TOBYhouse’s electric Moiré Wall-clock, 9.8 inches in diameter. Details include protruding walnut hands and a bright red power cord. From £375 ($633) through www.tobyhouse.co.uk.
<b>BIG AND BEAUTIFUL</b></br> At 70.9 inches in diameter and 6.7 inches deep, flamboyant Dutch designer Marcel Wanders’s Big Ben clock for Moooi is a major investment in every way. $8,930 at Klaus (www.klausn.com).
<b>CONCRETE PROPOSAL</b></br> Intended, through its shadow-enhancing spiral-staircase design, to “link time and space,” Taipei-based 22 Design Studio’s concrete 4th Dimension Wall Clock (5.9 inches in diameter) is heavy with meaning. $199 (U.S.) through www.gnr8.biz.
<b>FLOATING DEVICE</b></br> Designed by Aminimal Studio for Umbra, the graphic TIMA wall clock consists of two separate pieces: a metal frame (22 inches in diameter) sprouting Roman numerals and a floating centre that enlists the wall itself as a clock board. $50 (U.S.) through www.umbra.com
<b>BOARD ROOM</b></br> Swedish rusticity meets mid-century chic in CB2’s 9-by-24.5-inch Allways Hanging Clock, which features a recycled-saal-wood body (and is as good-looking hung horizontally). $119 at CB2 (www.cb2.com).
<b>BENDING TIME</b></br> Combining industrial style with vibrant colour, EQ3’s bent-metal Juniper clock, 16 inches in diameter and also available in blue, is just the thing to punch up a blank white wall. $49.99 at EQ3.
<b>MIRRORS, MIRRORS</b></br> Composed of 37 reflective metal discs, EQ3’s Frequency Clock (19 inches in diameter) evokes perforated speaker faces – not to mention the CBC logo. Either way, it sings. $49.99 at EQ3 (www.eq3.com).
<b>FLIGHT PATTERN</b></br> A dozen individually mounted swallows soar around the hands of Haoshi Design’s Swallow Clock, handmade in Taiwan. (And if birds aren’t your thing, there’s also a goldfish version.) $149 (U.S.) through www.gnr8.biz.