Richard Birkett's "Fantasy Clocks" from old mechanical detritus

Bill Brazell turns us on to the amazingly strange assemblage clocks of Richard Birkett. From his bio:

Richard Birkett sees obsolete machines and bits of our past as NOT JUNK, but as objects with the potential for a new life. Birkett dismantles these defunct machines, and incorporates their intricate insides and outsides in his assemblages. Broken typewriters, dinosaur VCR's, 1950s cameras, and superannuated engineering devices are favorites for rescue and demolition. Making clocks is his form of a romantic quest to save the flotsam and industrial debris of the recent past from ending up in a landfill.

Richard Birkett's Fantasy Clocks

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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Anonymous

I have one of these from when he came to Philadelphia for an art show. It’s fun and functional – the slide viewer works and there are doodads that spin around making music. Maybe it looks a little strange on the mantelpiece but that’s fine by me. The exposed gears etc. make for some wonderful detail, like the models I used to make out of scraps from other models.
ReboundDesigns

I bought one of these for my boyfriend at a craft show in Maryland several years ago. I was so excited to give it to him at Christmas, but I had to hang onto it for a few months. I couldn’t stay quiet entirely though, and I told him I got him the coolest thing ever, and he should try and guess what I got him.

His guess: “Is it a time machine?” Me: “Um. Holy shit. It actually IS a time machine.” For the next few months, we joked about all the awesome things we would go see with his new time machine.

When he opened it a few months later, he didn’t let on if he was disappointed that it wouldn’t actually travel through time, because it is that awesome of a clock.
halfacre

I’ll bet he could cook up one heck of a Gravy Fountain
zoester

I recently bought one of these clocks while in Brooklyn on vacation last month. What is crazy is the TSA didn’t even ask what was going on when we sent it through the carry on xray. I thought for sure we would have been questioned. That could perhaps be just another element to how great the clocks really are.

I can easily say this was the best art piece I have bought in a while and Mr. Birkett was terrific and let me customize our clock. Makes me smile to just look at it. Then to have a music box, working slide viewer… wow…that’s just a bonus for me.

Thanks for posting another treasure!