Octagonal Wall Clock

February 27, 2025

I was very close with my great-great aunt. She didn’t have any children of her own, but she raised my grandfather and was really involved in my dad’s upbringing. I always thought of her as the definition of a posh southern belle. She was stylish (sometimes ostentatiously), learned, wry, smart and thoughtful. She is a large part of why I started using my Hobonichi planner to write a daily log. When I visited my parents’ house for Christmas, I came across 15 years of her daily journals that my dad inherited. It felt so moving to be able to get a glimpse of her life day by day. Her handwriting was distinctive, and I love looking back on the cards she dutifully sent for every birthday and holiday.

I miss her every day.

After she died, my grandfather (knowing our special connection) really encouraged me to take things from her home and to put them in mine. This clock is one of those things.

A few months ago I was on a video call with one of my coworkers and he asked, “What’s up with the grandma clock?” I asked him what made it obvious it was a grandma clock? His answer was because it had ornament. The octagonal shape, glass around the clock, and then the wood border was totally unnecessary for the function of the clock.

It got me thinking about how these types of small ornamental touches are dated because of the slight increase cost of production, but also shifting attitudes towards objects – favoring simplicity, minimalism, functionality, and a product’s ability to be systematized both for producers and consumers above all.

Products are produced affordably at scale to become more accessible to people, at the cost of creating things that are boxy and unsentimental. (I recognize that this clock was also mass produced, but there was a different attitude around this decades ago.)

The ornamental doesn’t have much appeal anymore, because it’s usually a cheaply made imitation of a bygone era, and would distract from the integrity of the object. If people can’t get really nice things, they want things that have the decency to not attract attention to themselves. We don’t want our boxy objects to distract from the boxes they live in – our homes — the most functional of spaces.

(An aside… I have a theory that everyone is a weeb these days because the aesthetic draw of minimalism and wabi-sabi is compatible with the economic precocity of millennials and zoomers. People can’t afford baroque, but they can afford to simply not have stuff and call it artistic.)

There is allure in believing and acting on this value system predicated on product systemization: there is no cognitive dissonance between these objects and what they represent. Everything fits neatly into a literal box, and the interests of producers and consumers are aligned via cost. There is nothing to remove in these objects, and that can be really beautiful, and works well within the times we’re situated in.

When you introduce the “unnecessary”, it’s much harder to put together some type of vision that can concisely be articulated or make decisions upon. Creating cohesion across the ornamental introduces many additional formal elements like shape, material, color, size, level of detail, etc. that maybe more broadly define a person’s “taste” as opposed to their rational belief system (like the mindset focused on simplicity in function and form).

Taste, like a person, is dynamic, contradictory, and greater than its sum of parts. When I think about the things my great great aunt was into individually, it’s verging on garish. But taken together, it transforms into something I think of as stylish and idiosyncratic. This clock doesn’t fit in that flamboyant category, but it always contributed a small part to the impression I have of my aunt’s style. I’ve liked this clock since I was a child, and I’m thankful to have such a reminder of someone so dear to me.