With the functionality of the wristwatch diminished by clocks on cell phones, millions of dead watches are collecting dust in drawers across the world.
But not everyone has turned their back on the classic timepieces: Roughly 885 of those old, broken and discarded watches have been liberated from the sock drawer and hung on wooden boards in the Boston offices of Moskow Linn Architects.
“Why is it that you can’t throw away these watches — they’re busted, they’re old — we haven’t fully figured that out,” said Keith Moskow, who along with Robert Linn launched the Thousand Watch Project on a lark a few years ago. “Maybe it’s something about them being close to your skin and you identify it with a time and place?”
More puzzling is why people from as far away as Australia and Hong Kong have mailed their busted watches to Boston.
“It’s a way of clearing them out and having a place for them to go that’s not just tossing them out in the trash,” Moskow said.
The architects ask donors to include a 10-word epitaph along with their name. They cherish each story and even created a website — MoskowLinn.com/TKWP — for folks to visit their old watches.
“When we’re done we’re going to make a pinewood box and send them to the Smithsonian to illustrate a moment in time,” said Moskow, who won’t contact the museum until he reaches 1,000. “They’re going to get a one-way ticket.”
