Interior design inspiration – Mid-century modern clocks

_{Some items have been gifted}

As you all know, I am a massive fan of mid-century modern design. Over the years I’ve filled my home with teak desks, G-Plan sideboards and Ercol chairs, yet I still love searching out new pieces to add to my retro interior. Now that the bigger items of furniture are sorted, I enjoy looking shopping for smaller vintage-inspired pieces so today I’m going to share all the inspiration I’ve found online and in stores for mid-century modern accessories – in particular, clocks.

The ultimate must-have for a mid-century interior is a star-burst clock. It’s a design icon and can be traced back to Westclox, who first made this style of clock in wood and brass. The clocks came in many different variations – some containing up to 48 pointed spokes – but this one above is my favourite and top of my mid-century wish list! At the time Westclox was actually trying to imitate George Nelson’s original ‘Sunburst’ clock with their designs (which has just 12 spokes but the same wooden finish) and their design quickly became as popular as Nelson’s Sunburst original and are now highly sought after. It’s particularly difficult to find an example with all of the spokes intact, as many have broken off and been repaired over the years, resulting in originals which have varying tones of wood where a spoke or two have been replaced.

I found this lookalike Pluto clock (above) online for a fraction of the cost that the originals are now commanding. The good news is that a modern replica is less likely to go wrong (having the right time on the wall is pretty important, isn’t it?!) and you can barely tell the difference from the real thing. It has the same wooden spikes and metal clock-face, and I think it would look great in my living room against my Googie-style orange wallpaper.

And that conveniently brings us on to Googie clocks. One of my favourite looks from the era, this space-age design style is full of bright colours and softly rounded asymmetric shapes. I’ve written all about the Googie style in the past (here’s my previous post) and I adore the layers of shapes, bubbles and star-bursts popular in this kind of design.

The newly designed Googie-esque clocks below start at just £20 for this round green Newgate clock so not only are they the design classics of the future, they are a great price too. I think the blue egg clock will look fantastic in my retro diner-inspired kitchen when I decorate this room – it’s next on the list – plus, I want the red-and-white bullitt for my office. 

Are you a fan of mid-century modern too? What elements would you include in your own home? Let me know which of these clocks is your favourite by leaving me a comment or tweeting me @Cassiefairy.

Some items in this blog post have been gifted to me and the pink links indicate a gifted product, affiliate link or information source. All thoughts and opinions in this post are based on my own experience and I am not responsible for your experience 🙂