The double anniversary of George Nelson’s Wall Clocks for Vitra

6 November 2024

It was 1947 when the American designer George Nelson, design director of Hermann Miller, was asked to think about and design a series of wall clocks. Thinking about this instrument, which could be quickly glanced at to know the time and at the same time used as a furnishing and decorative element on the wall, Nelson came to a decisive conclusion. The first is that people read the time starting from the position of the hands rather than from the numbers, which were therefore superfluous. The second is that everyone wore a wristwatch, so the wall clock had a decorative rather than indicative function.

These two assumptions are the starting point for the collection of 14 watches launched in 1949, all different but, in fact, united by the absence of numbers and characterized by different materials and shapes. Design, more than technology, is what defines their identity but the story of the genesis of this design is as uncertain as it is ironic, as Nelson himself has said.

Speaking of the Ball Clock, one of the most iconic models in the collection, in a 1981 interview Nelson candidly revealed that he was not sure of the real paternity of his project. “The evening we developed the Ball Clock,” he says, “was one of the funniest. [Isamu] Noguchi came to visit, and Bucky Fuller also dropped by. He saw that we were working on the watches and started making sketches. Everyone was trying, ignoring each other and making sketches at a certain point we left, suddenly we were all feeling tired and we had drunk a bit too much. The next morning, I came back and there was this roll [of drawing paper], and Irving and I looked at it and somewhere on it was a Ball Clock. To this day I still don’t know who invented it. I know it wasn’t me. It could have been Irving, but he didn’t think so… We both thought it was probably Isamu, because he was a specialist in taking two stupid things and making something extraordinary out of them… it could have been a collaboration. Anyway, we never figured it out. So, we created the Ball Clock, which in its futility was perhaps the best-selling piece of furniture ever”.

A testament to the design affinity that Nelson had nurtured within his studio, Nelson Associates, calling upon a series of brilliant and free minds such as Irving Harper, George Mulhauser (designer of the Coconut Chair), Robert Brownjohn (designer of the set of the James Bond film Goldfinger), Don Chadwick and the histrionic Isamu Noguchi.

The initial core of 14 clocks was followed by many others, up to a hundred models. In 1999, Vitra began a precious re-edition process and in 2024, to celebrate its 35th anniversary, it launched a limited edition of the Ball Clock in four colors: Down, Sunrise, Sunset and Dusk, which in their names and colors evoke different moods and different moments of the day. Preserving the decorative power, the sculptural presence and the ironic soul of that evening when Nelson and his associates invented this and other wall clocks.

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