Sunflower Clock

In 1947, George Nelson was commissioned to rethink the wall clock entirely. His conclusion was precise: people read time through the relative position of hands, not numerals. Numbers, he reasoned, were redundant. And as wristwatches became ubiquitous, the wall clock shed its utilitarian obligation and became something else, a compositional object, a presence on the wall.

The Sunflower Clock emerged from this thinking. Radiating spokes of birch extend from a central dial like petals caught mid-motion, giving the piece its name and its energy. The absence of a numbered face is not a reduction but a refinement, focusing attention on form, proportion, and the quiet rhythm of the hands.

Nelson's original collection of 14 clocks, launched in 1949, shared only one rule: no numbers. Everything else, material, silhouette, scale, color, was open to reinvention. That freedom produced some of the most recognized objects in American mid-century design. Vitra has preserved these designs with fidelity, producing each clock with the same commitment to material and proportion that defined the originals.

• Radiating birch spokes with metal detail
• Numberless dial with quartz movement
• Rooted in Nelson's 1949 clock collection for Howard Miller
• Produced by Vitra with period-faithful materials