In an age when our phones tell us the exact millisecond in fourteen time zones and announce the next full moon before we’ve even noticed a waxing gibbous, Kirk has devoted himself to something far slower, stranger, and—by his own admission—slightly magical: building clocks that track the phases of the moon.
“I thought time clocks were boring,” he told me. “Moon clocks were magical. It was that simple.”
Kirk is fifty-three, a former schoolteacher and electronics man who, improbably, found his way into the orbit of lunar timekeeping through lasers. As a young technician he programmed laser displays for clubs and concerts, “moody, janky” devices that required endless tinkering. Years later, when hobby lasers became available to burn designs into wood, he bought the cheapest one he could find and started making small trinkets. A keyring led to wall art, which led, eventually, to the first Lunarium—a round dial marked with moons and crowned by an owl.
The clocks look like they might have been lifted from the study of a Victorian spiritualist: ornate, slightly steampunk, and unapologetically impractical. Unlike the reliable certainty of quartz minutes, the moon insists on its irregularity. It takes 29.5 days to complete a cycle, which means any design must contend with the awkward leftover half-day.
“It’s a complete pain,” Kirk admits, running through the geometry—59 segments, each 6.10169491525 degrees, lest the dial drift into nonsense halfway around. There is also the awkward fact that the moon’s face is reversed in the Southern Hemisphere. His solution, so far, has been to give both versions their due: twin rings of phases, one for north, one for south.
What might have begun as a novelty has taken on, for Kirk’s customers, a devotional cast. “The vast majority of people who buy them are of the Wiccan and Pagan tradition,” he says. “But there are also people who just want a decorative centerpiece.” He has sold hundreds, and what delights him most are the photos he receives of Lunariums enthroned on altars, where the slow hand turns not with the hours but with the ebb and flow of light and shadow.
For Kirk, who has long felt an inborn affinity for magic, time, and mysticism, the clocks are less about precision than representation and resonance. “If you want a 100% accurate reading of the current moon position in the sky, use an app on your phone,” he tells me. “If you want an emotional response to something that looks beautiful, is practical, and feels nostalgic, get one of my Lunariums.”
The designs borrow freely from history and imagination: Victorian pocket watches, Gothic cathedrals, surrealist diagrams, even CERN’s particle maps. “It’s all about beauty,” Kirk says. “Beauty invokes a very base emotion that’s magical in itself.”
Pressed to define his role—not just as a craftsman but as a keeper of celestial time—he pauses. “When I receive such positive feedback about what I make, how special these things are to people,” he finally says, “it becomes both an honor and an obligation to continue.”
And so, while the world hurries on its seconds, Kirk’s clocks mark another rhythm: the slow waxing and waning that once guided tides, crops, and rituals, and still, for some, offers the faint glow of order in the dark.
Please visit Kirk’s Etsy shop DaVinciLaserUK or DaVinciLaser.com to check out more items.
