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.

Citizen Independent 1481010 - Lonesome Puppy by Yoshitomo Nara

Citizen worked with several artists to provide special edition watches for their 1481010 range. Yoshitomo Nara was the most frequent collaborator, producing 4 watches in the 1481010s.
Nara is a Japanese artist who came to be known during Japan's pop art movement of the 90s. His work tend to be simply drawn, and are scary cute, tending to show things such as cute girls but carrying large knives!

This watch is of his Lonesome Puppy character, who is shown on the face of the watch along with multi coloured dots. The strap also has dots, but raised out of the leather, and a tartan backing. The back of the watch shows another of his characters, along with his signature, and the band to hold the strap in place has an engraved bone.

As part of the package (which originally sold for 18,000yen), the watch came in a light wooden box with an engraved figure on the front (the same character as on the watch back). Inside the cover of the box, it states that "This model is dedicated to Shonen Knife". Shonen Knife are a J-Pop group, who's album Happy Hour (1998) had a cover designed by Nara.

The watch was released in 2000 with the catalogue number IT21-4117i, and was limited to 500 watches.
It is based on the 6038 module, with rotating discs to show the time, and I've blogged others from this general design. The model number is 6038-L19966.

For more information about the 1481010 range, see my summary page here