My dad Tom Kowalski was a Torpedoman in a TBF Avenger during WWII. He told me stories about taking off and landing on an aircraft carrier deck in rough seas. His stories got me interested in aircraft and airplanes. My shop is full of spare parts from aircraft graveyards and other oddball places. I’m amazed at how they put these things together back in the day - thousands of rivets, lightweight aluminum, and mechanical instruments.
Friends call me Clockman. I founded and designed for Timeworks of Berkeley, California, until we sold the company in 2011. I never counted, but I am guessing we produced a thousand different clock designs over the three million clocks we manufactured. Today, years later, I still have a great passion for assembling archaic mechanical, Industrial, and decorative parts into clocks and other timekeeping objects of all description.
Any mechanical invention has always fascinated me. Aside from Willie Mays, Leonardo DaVinci was my alternate hero. I always preferred mechanical toys as a kid, and I still find gears, pulleys, springs, and motors to be more compelling than electronic and wireless solutions, amazing as they are. In my shop, you will find parts from vintage steam engines, and other machines, just getting ready for a new life as something else.
When you look at old black and white images of long gone factories, you often see desks with amazing task lights, with mechanical joints of brass, interesting tin shades, metal toggle switches and cloth covered cords. I often start with one main vintage component - a vintage toy steam engine, miniature brass diver helmet, or other arcane contraption - in order to complete a unique and somewhat out-of-the-ordinary lighting fixture.
Sail and steam, rivets, steel, teak decking. Brass lighting fixtures, huge propellers, walking beam engines. Portholes, telegraphs, periscopes, lines, railing, rudders, and lifeboats. Ships that ride above the waves and submarines that ride below them. Antique and vintage nautical and other maritime components still fascinate people young and old, and have continuously found their way into my work for over three decades.
