Bengaluru entrepreneur creates arty timepieces as a hobby

Entrepreneur Chocko Valliappa's passion for unique clock-making transforms his home into a museum of artistic timepieces.

A few years ago around Christmas time, entrepreneur Chocko Valliappa, founder of Vee Technologies, a business process and operations consulting company, was in Norway for a meeting. He was an hour early so to kill time, he strolled into a store that looked invitingly festive. Inside, he saw a cheerful red circular carpet with a border fringed with a pattern of children holding hands. “I could see a clock in that carpet,” says Valliappa, who picked it up without hesitation. 

Back in his home in Bengaluru, Valliappa designed a wall clock with the carpet, sandwiching it between glass . When visitors walk into Valliappa’s apartment on Palace road, the bright red timepiece leaps to attention, instantly drawing the eye.

But that’s not the only artistic clock. The apartment if filled with intriguing time pieces. Taking up most of the wall behind the dining table is a rectangular tie and dye circle patterned fabric with a clock in the centre. “This was a bedsheet I spotted in a local market – my wife was surprised to see me picking it up and asked me what I want it for,” grins Valliappa.

The hobby horologist’s latest purchase is a cobweb from a hoodoo store in the US. “Can you imagine paying $300 dollars for a cobweb?” he asks. “It is a real cobweb imprinted on a velvet cloth. It will be a great backdrop for a clock,” he says.

Time travel

From an Egyptian papyrus and Broadway posters to a striking photograph of the Eiffel tower, Valliappa has crafted clocks on unusual backgrounds and his apartment is a veritable museum of these time pieces that transport you from the US to Paris to Africa.

One of his most striking pieces is a gorgeous art work featuring a Madonna-faced woman in red on which Valliappa has projected time through cleverly fitted projectors on the roof. “I picked up this art work in Chitra Santhe, the annual art carnival in Bengaluru,” he says.