Koi-Fish Veneer Clock
A round wall clock built around two koi chasing each other nose-to-tail, cut entirely from wood veneer.
Overview
A round wall clock built around a pair of koi. The face is stained a deep pond blue; two calico koi — cut from orange, cream and near-black veneer — chase each other nose-to-tail in a ring, and a turned wooden lotus sits dead center as the hub the hands run through.
The koi
Each fish is marquetry, not paint: every colored patch — the orange blotches, the cream body, the dark fins — is a separate piece of veneer cut to shape and fitted edge to edge into the one beside it. The two koi mirror each other in a yin-yang circle, tail meeting nose, so your eye keeps travelling around the dial instead of stopping on a “top.” Placing the fish this way also leaves the numberless blue field open, which is what makes the clock read as a pond first and a timepiece second.
The face and the hub
The ground is stained a saturated blue to stand in for water, so the pale koi and the warm center pop against it. At the middle, a layered wooden lotus doubles as the hub cap: the clock movement passes through its heart and the slim black hour and minute hands (plus a fine gold second hand) sweep over the fish. Keeping the hardware minimal — no printed numerals, no bezel clutter — lets the marquetry carry the whole face.
It was made as one of a small koi-themed pair, alongside a matching laser-cut box scene on the same theme.