Tangible geometry, imbued with function: Coco Flip’s Mill Clock
Image credit: Michael Pham
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Coco Flip’s Mill Clock is an object for measuring time, but not necessarily telling it. The colourful hands of this timepiece silently rotate around an octagonal face that is otherwise free from markers, numerical or otherwise. This is a deliberate choice on the part of its designers.
‘These playful hands move around the face and just infer roughly what the time is,’ says Coco Flip co-founder Kate Stokes.
You might be at your desk and want to draw for a given period of time—the clock will tell you how long you have been drawing, but maybe not precisely what time it is. It is a chance to be lost in time or the process of whatever you are doing at that moment.
Clocks have weight to them in that they can also often serve as symbolic markers of momentous points in time—they can be a gift for a birthday, a graduation or, more traditionally, a retirement present. The build of Mill Clock reflects these time-tested conventions, in a way. The object is made from milled aluminum, which is a new manufacturing process for the duo.
aImage credit: Coco Flipa
‘We came up with the form by looking at different ways we could use aluminium milling to make a freestanding clock,’ says Haslett Grounds, Coco Flip’s other co-founder. ‘We wanted to create something big and chunky with presence, without it being overbearing.’
Coco Flip wanted to test what was possible with the milling process, too. As Grounds explains, it’s relatively easy to use milling to create forms that rely on relief for effect—or elements that ‘stick out’. Instead, they wanted to mill into the front of the aluminum block. Achieving Mill Clock’s sharp lines and geometries in this way was much more challenging.
‘We kind of masochistically enjoy the process of working with a new material, and then being challenged by the inevitable hurdles along the way’ says Stokes.
Stokes and Grounds founded their studio in 2010, producing furniture and lighting with a focus on quality and longevity. They love to experiment —Souvenir provided a welcome excuse to do so with a tangible outcome. It offered the opportunity to create a small object that’s unique but accessible—something that can be taken home and cherished by visitors. Coco flip enjoys that thought—that you can take an item home with you, a memento that captures a moment in time.
Image credit: Coco Flip
About Souvenir
Souvenir is a collection of meaningful, functional and affordable objects by Australian designers and craftspeople.
Commissioned by Friends & Associates and hosted by specialist architecture and design bookstore Bookshop by Uro, each artefact encapsulates the current fascinations and preoccupations of its designer in a compact, collectible form.