Yoshitomo Nara Walk On flip clock

I decided that I would blog a clock again today, but it is an unusual design.

The clock is called Walk On, and it was designed by Yoshitomo Nara.

Yoshitomo Nara is a Tokyo based artist, born in 1959, who's work is influenced by Japanese pop culture, manga, and TV. His work has a style often described as scary cute - cute simple images which often have a dark theme.

The Walk On clock is a flip clock design, this means that the time is shown on little plastic plates which flip over when the digits change (like the old railway station destination boards). The special part of the design is that each of the plates has a separate drawing by Nara on each one. It works with a 24hr set up, so there are 84 different drawings (24 hrs and 60 minutes). It often is sold with the warning about the colourful language as one of the minutes drawings (the 00) has a swear word on. The flip drawings are sat in a rectangular case behind a perspex cover. Inside is a quartz movement which is powered by a large 'C' size battery. The clock was exhibited in several collections, so was released also as a piece of art.

It came in 3 colours, and this is the beige model. I think it originally came out in the early 2000s as a limited edition, but there may have been several releases as there are some still for sale (around $350 new) but with slightly different text on the front.