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A Clockmaker Marks Time at Home

DREAM SPACE

Clocks that Erik Ulfers made are on display at home in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. He has no formal training in clockmaking, but as set designer he’s made countless scale models, so he was accustomed to working in miniature, he says. The mechanical stuff was learn-as-you-go. BRYAN DERBALLA FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

By HILARY POTKEWITZ

If Erik Ulfers can’t sleep, he won’t just lie there staring at the clock. He’s more likely to take one apart piece by piece and rebuild it. All he’d have to do is walk down the hall into his clock workshop—a 170-square-foot studio he built onto the side of his house in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.


“I can’t begin to tell you how meditative it is to problem-solve with a clock,” he says.


About 30 dark clocks line the walls and shelves, softly ticking away. Some are more sculpture than timepiece, with shiny gold bees buzzing around the minute hand or pure gold dust dripping through a 60-second hourglass.



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