In late 2019, I finished “Perpetual No.1”. As the name indicates, it was my first clock featuring a perpetual calendar complication. In June 2020, I was contacted by a gentleman from Perth, Australia who was interested in commissioning a piece based on the “Perpetual No.1” design. After a thorough back-and-forth with drawings, emails, and phone calls, we arrived at a this beautiful design.

However, work didn’t start right away.

People always speak of the patience it must take for me to create these works. But I would also like to express my gratitude for the patience that my clients have. When I was first contacted for this clock, I had just started work on “The Grasmere Commission”, a nearly two-year project. Then, this piece required over a year to complete and months to properly test and refine. To top it off, there was a three-month delay when I moved my shop to another location. In total, the client had to wait over 3 years to see a finished piece, and by the time, it’s delivered it will be closer to four years.

In 2023, this clock, titled “Perth”, was completed. I believe it was worth the wait.

This piece shares a lot of DNA with “Perpetual No.1” but has some very notable upgrades. A moon dial was added, along with a day dial. It’s also a foot larger than “Perpetual No.1”, which may not sound like a lot, but that extra foot doubled the weight and gear size.

For anyone not familiar, a perpetual calendar complication keeps track of the date, including mechanically accounting for whether a month has 30 or 31 days, and even automatically adjusts for the 28 days in February, and 29 days in a leap year. The perpetual calendar mechanisms that I create switch instantly at midnight, so in the video, you can see the clock automatically click four full days when the hands pass 12:00 p.m.

The moon dial has four different faces, and between those are constellations visible from the southern hemisphere. The large display for the four moons required a disc that took up almost all the space behind the perpetual calendar mechanisms. That means that all the mechanisms for the perpetual calendar had to be in front. Oftentimes, mechanical challenges and constraints can lead to aesthetic discoveries. This is one such case for me. The result of pushing all the mechanisms in front led to a large moon nestled above a forest of gears and levers, similar to the actual moon above a forest of trees.

There are a couple things to note about the main gears for this clock. The spokes are designed to mirror the overall design of the clock itself. Each spoke depicts the frame of the clock running down the middle, with the number-panels splayed out around it. Because of the size and the amount of detail, these gears also took significantly longer to sculpt than any others to date.

I’ll be delivering and installing this piece in the next months. While I’m looking forward to the trip, I’ll be sad to see this clock go.

Two years ago, I was contacted by a gentleman from England who had come across my work online and wanted to commission a mechanical clock. He was interested in a large vertically-oriented piece with a perpetual-calendar mechanism and a moon-phase indicator. It was for his holiday home in Grasmere in the Lake District of the U.K.

After a lot of brass, labor, and love, I’m happy to present to you “The Grasmere Commission.”

This clock features what’s known as a “triple date” mechanism. It displays the day, date, and month. The challenge for this particular design was the different locations for all of the dials, which required a group of levers and cams to reach back and forth across the clock. As with many mechanical challenges the added complexity really just led to more brass for me to carve into, which makes it more fun.

This piece also has a moon-phase display that I enjoyed painting. To get the subtle colors and detail I used a 20/0 brush under magnification. The result makes me want to put a moon in every clock I make from now on.

The other challenge for this piece was the typography that wraps around all the dials. I experimented with a few methods, including acid-etching and laser engraving. However in the end engraving it by hand with a rotary tool gave me the look that I liked best. It gave the lettering more character and allowed for a very deep engraving. It took a lot of time but it was worth it.

This was my biggest clockwork undertaking to date. It’s the most complicated mechanism I’ve ever made, the most intricately carved gears, and by far the coolest dial I’ve ever created.

It’s been quite a journey.

Enjoy!

2019

Note: This is currently the only piece in my inventory for sale. If you’re interested in purchasing it please contact me.

A curiosity that grew into an obsession…

This is the first clock from my humble workshop to feature a perpetual calendar. For those unfamiliar, a “perpetual calendar” not only displays the date but also keeps track of the varying number of days in each month. It even accounts for leap years. Because of this, the date is ‘perpetually’ correct.

Toward the end of the video, you can see this at work: at midnight on February 28th, the date-hand clicks forward four days, along with the month-hand, to indicate the 1st of March.

Over the last 15 years of divergent clockmaking, I’ve come to realize one thing — There are no photos or videos that will capture these moving sculptures as the human eye can or recreate the experience of interacting with them in person. I’ve put a lot of time into learning about photography, but when I finished this piece, I decided it deserved more than still pictures. It was time to voyage into the daunting realm of film.

These two videos (images two and three) are the result. Enjoy!

2019

I have an affinity for horizontal clocks. It’s not just because I like deviating from the norm, which I definitely do. It’s not because I find a horizontal design to be more aesthetically pleasing either - both orientations can look beautiful if done well. The reason is mechanical. There’s something very simple, direct, and perfect about the way the gears, weight, and pendulum fall into place. With a horizontal gear-layout, nothing overlaps or requires cluttered bridges or extra plates. This allows for an unimpeded view of every component. Clean and perfect.

The second image is a short and sweet video showing “Th3” in action. Enjoy!

2019

This double-dial machine was commissioned for a client’s 50th birthday, which is why it earned the title “Quinquagenarius”, a Latin word denoting his 50-year milestone.

There are two key features to this piece:

The first is its two-dial layout. The large dial indicates the hours and minutes, and the smaller dial displays the seconds. The escapement is in full view, deliberately counting the seconds and advancing the hand around the dial with each tick. 

The second feature is a nine-foot handmade chain, which holds the weight that powers the clock. The fabrication of this chain required 480 hand-machined pieces. Each of the links was cut out and carved by hand with a rotary tool. It was labor-intensive to create but definitely worth it, as the chain of this clock is invariably the first thing people notice and comment on when viewing the piece. 

2019

In the world of horology, the word “complication” is actually a good thing. It refers to any mechanical system that has a function beyond the simple display of time. “Paper Moon” is my first wall-clock that has a complication. It uses mechanical gearing, working in concert with the hands, to display the phases of the moon.

This piece also gave me the opportunity to pick up a paintbrush again, which is something I don’t get to do as often now that I’ve transitioned from an illustrator to a clockmaker.

2017

There were two visual thoughts running through my head when I first penciled the thumbnail sketch for this clock. The first was to create a piece where the face was mostly eroded away, showing only a small slice of a clock that once was and is now completely exposing the organic-looking mechanism of the clock. The second was to push a growing, vine-like style that blurred the lines between organic and mechanical. I also couldn’t shake this image of the twelve suspended above the dial on a twisting branch of metal.

You can see how the gears and numbers of this clock were created by visiting the “Jeweler’s Saw” and “Sculpting” sections of this site.

2016

Over a decade before the creation of this piece, I made a clock simply titled “Mechanical No.5”. That clock was the first to use magnifying lenses in the hands as a visual feature. It was also the first time that I used kitakata rice paper in my work to add contrast and introduced a soft warm texture that compliments the metal.

In 2016, a client approached me with an interest in commissioning a piece in the spirit of “Mechanical No.5”. His piece, “Redux V”, is the result.

2014-2016

On August 4, 2014, I received an email from a client named Mark Jungers, who was interested in commissioning a large clockwork installation. I had been making mechanical clocks for about a decade, but nothing of the size and complexity that he was requesting. Jungers is a wine aficionado, and this mechanical sculpture was to be the centerpiece for a wine cellar he was constructing in his Milwaukee home. I’d always wanted to work on a more architectural scale, so when he found me online and emailed me with his proposal, I jumped at the opportunity. After thorough planning and concept sketches, I began building “The Jungers Commission.”

This 7-1/2-foot-tall clockwork installation can be viewed from all four sides. It features gears that are a foot in diameter and has six different dials, including a moon-phase dial and a day indicator. The clock is powered by a 100-lb. weight, which hangs from a handmade chain, consisting of 420 separately machined parts (each link is designed differently). Altogether, the clock took 2,421 hours to complete and consisted of 5,080 hand-machined parts.

This is a collection of work that uses commercial quartz clock-motors to power the hands. While they don’t have exposed handmade gears, the brass-sculpting and screw-threading are still done by hand.

I went to the College for Creative Studies in Detroit for illustration. While attending, I didn’t take a single metal-working class, and I certainly didn’t learn how to cut gears and make clocks. This turned out to be the right choice because the drawing and rendering skills that I honed at college make it easier to get my ideas down and create a more accurate conceptual foundation for each sculpture.

Here’s a collection of concept renderings, some of which have already been made into clocks. 

During these five years, only two mechanical pieces were created, but they were both very significant for me.

“Mechanical No.6” was my first double-dial clock, and this design would influence many future creations. It directly inspired “Quinquagenarius” and also contributed to the look of “The Jungers Commission” and “Paper Moon”.

“Mechanical No.7” is special to me because, in a way, it’s the end of an era. I leapt into almost 1000 hours of work with little regard for practicality or functionality. This is the last piece I created with such an unbridled approach. After 2011, I began to focus more seriously on the craft of horology in order to bring a level of accuracy and precision to my work. “Mechanical No.7” reminds me to stay acquainted with the artistic side of the equation.

For Christmas of 2003, my father surprised me with a full sized knee-mill and a metal lathe, equipped with the attachments necessary to cut gears for clocks. I’d expressed an interest in clockmaking before but couldn’t conceive of actually doing it. Now, I had in my possession all the tools I needed, accompanied by a step-by-step book titled “How to Make an 8 Day Skeleton Wall Clock” by W.R. Smith. All I had to do was follow the text in that book closely and I could create my own ticking masterpiece. The thing is, I did not follow the text that closely. It turns out that even during the fabrication of my first mechanical clock titled “Mechanical No.1” I had an affinity for breaking the rules of horology. I am an artist, after all, and breaking the rules leads to all sorts of visually interesting things.

This group of work encompasses the days when I was more artist than clockmaker. I was experimenting and learning which horological rules could be broken and which ones I had to strictly adhere to. My metal-carving skills were in their infancy as well, since I’d only ever used pencils and paint brushes.