Swatch released Alfred Hofkunst’s food-shaped watches as a limited edition in 1991, selling them in vegetable markets as a promotion. Another historical link between food and timekeeping is the Victorian teasmade, an alarm-triggered apparatus that lit a stove, boiled water and poured tea automatically.
Daily Digest
The Day in Watchmaking
Food and timekeeping meet in two distinct ways: through the practical business of preparing tea and through the form of a watch itself. The Victorian teasmade put an alarm at the start of an automatic sequence, lighting a stove, boiling water and pouring tea. Here, the connection was functional: timekeeping triggered preparation. Alfred Hofkunst’s food-shaped watches for Swatch took a different approach. Released as a limited edition in 1991, they made food the design rather than the task. Swatch extended that connection to the promotion, selling the watches in vegetable markets. Seen together, the teasmade and Hofkunst’s watches offer contrasting expressions of food-inspired horology: one organised around an automatic process, the other around shape and presentation.