"Having designed and built several clocks during my career it suddenly occurred to me that when you look at the face of a clock both hands have the same center"
About this Quote
It reads like a throwaway observation until you feel the floor shift under it. Kit Williams, a maker whose career depends on precision and ornament, frames a clock not as a device for measuring time but as a small, stubborn fact about perspective: the minute hand and the hour hand appear to be in constant competition, yet they’re literally anchored to the same point. The line works because it turns engineering into philosophy without announcing itself as philosophy.
The specific intent is modest - a craftsperson noticing something “suddenly” obvious - but the subtext is relational. Conflict, pace, impatience: these are differences in length and speed, not in origin. Williams doesn’t say “unity” or “balance”; he lets the geometry do the argument. It’s a clever sidestep from the motivational poster version of insight. The center isn’t a moral; it’s a mechanical truth you can verify with a glance.
Context matters: Williams is best known for Masquerade, a book that hid a real treasure in riddles and images. His work trains readers to treat everyday objects as coded surfaces - to suspect there’s more beneath the decorative face. Here, the “face of a clock” is the perfect phrase: a face implies expression, personality, even deception. Behind that expressive surface is a shared pivot, a reminder that what looks like opposition may be a single system playing out at different tempos.
It’s also quietly autobiographical. A clockmaker knows that alignment at the center is non-negotiable; everything else is calibration. The revelation is less about time than about how often we mistake motion for separation.
The specific intent is modest - a craftsperson noticing something “suddenly” obvious - but the subtext is relational. Conflict, pace, impatience: these are differences in length and speed, not in origin. Williams doesn’t say “unity” or “balance”; he lets the geometry do the argument. It’s a clever sidestep from the motivational poster version of insight. The center isn’t a moral; it’s a mechanical truth you can verify with a glance.
Context matters: Williams is best known for Masquerade, a book that hid a real treasure in riddles and images. His work trains readers to treat everyday objects as coded surfaces - to suspect there’s more beneath the decorative face. Here, the “face of a clock” is the perfect phrase: a face implies expression, personality, even deception. Behind that expressive surface is a shared pivot, a reminder that what looks like opposition may be a single system playing out at different tempos.
It’s also quietly autobiographical. A clockmaker knows that alignment at the center is non-negotiable; everything else is calibration. The revelation is less about time than about how often we mistake motion for separation.
Quote Details
| Topic | Time |
|---|
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