Lee Yuen-Rapati (BDes 2014) has NSCAD in his blood, literally. Both of his parents are professors: Lillian Yuen of jewelry and Patrick Rapati of drawing. “I mean, there has to be a list of NSCAD nepo babies,” he says, laughing. So art was unavoidable in his Dartmouth house, and he received his BDes in interdisciplinary arts in 2014, without ever taking one of his parents’ courses. “But let’s say there were some pretty honest at-home critiques of what I was working on,” he notes. Since 2014 he’s been running the Instagram account One Hour Watch (@onehourwatch) where for eight years he posted a daily drawing of a watch that took him 60 minutes or less. (He dropped down to occasional posting in 2022: “I wanted my evenings back.”) He’s now living his dream in London as a horological designer for Fears Watch Company, one of England’s oldest watchmakers.
Tell me about this watch obsession and how that dovetails with your art practice.
Midway through my undergrad program my mom saw this picture of a really, really, really high-end Swiss watch, called an Urwerk. And they use very sci-fi aesthetics, and little rotating cubes and stuff. So it’s not a watch just with two hands. Before then I’d not been paying attention to watches whatsoever—this redefined what a watch could be to me. And then I slowly fell down the rabbit hole. And one of the things that I really, I think, responded to was this idea that it’s a mix of very traditional handcrafts, and you can see the mark of makers’ tools, even if it’s CNC industrialized production. I enjoyed that it was what I thought playing in a field where there were less restrictions—but now that I’m in the industry, it’s like, no, there are restrictions everywhere, you always have to compromise with everything. But I was like, wow, it’s crazy that they can just use all of these materials and make what they want. And I was very much interested in it from an aesthetic standpoint, as opposed to an industrial or an engineering standpoint, which is kind of the other way that people would tend to get into watches.
Horology: What kind of community is this? What kind of fandom is it?
The fandom is worldwide at this point. There are a couple repair shops in Halifax and a clockmaker, I think, in Wolfville. And then of course, we have the Halifax clock tower, which I found out was made by the Vulliamy House which was a very well-respected British clockmaker back in the day. People who wanted to get an education in watchmaking, clockmaking, or just other general time studies would have to go to Switzerland, there are some schools in the States, there are some schools in England. I’ve not actually really had any formal training in watchmaking, it was all done as a hobby.
How did One Hour Watch come about?
That was at the tail end of my time at NSCAD, where I’d finished a technical drawing course, and I loved it. And then I started to realize I’m not drawing as much anymore. And I’m about to be finishing school, which means I’m probably not going to draw at all unless I force myself to. And it was it. I was drawing watches all the time at this point. But the first one was, I’m gonna sit down, I’m gonna give myself this one-hour time limit and see what I can see make. And as a whim, like a total whim, I decided I’m gonna post this on Twitter, and I’m just gonna say “the number one.” And then it was really the second day I was like, “here’s drawing number two.” And oh no, I’m accountable to 100 followers and the 10 people actually see these tweets like I have to do another one tomorrow.
Later on, it became more about actually learning by drawing. And so the additional rules that I kind of set out where I wanted it to be an original design, so I didn’t want to just do a drawing of a Rolex or something like that. Yeah, so an original design drawn in 60 minutes or less. And it had to be every day. And it had to be one drawing per day, so I didn’t like spend a Sunday doing seven drawings.
Do you have a favourite material combination that you like to use to draw watches?
This actually was all directly based off of the technical drawing course at NSCAD. What I enjoyed about that course specifically was it did what it said on the tin—you learn simple drawing exercises and specific techniques. And I really enjoyed that. So I use alcohol-based markers. And there might still be a few from DeSerres, because they do last a long time. And then I use a handmade paper. I believe it’s from a mill in Quebec, but I get it all as off-cut pieces of paper from the Gaspereau Press. There’s something about the texture of that paper works really well with the markers. I love the grain of it, and all of the different points.
What are you wearing right now?
I have a Ming 3705. Ming is a brand from Malaysia. And we’ve been kind of mutual fans for the last few years and I got to doing some promotional illustration for them because they like to come out with teasers for their watches. I have produced a number of illustrations for them and then the trade-off is that I get a watch at the end.
Follow Lee Yuen-Rapati’s One Hour Watch (@onehourwatch) on Instagram.
Learn more about NSCAD’s Interdisciplinary Design program.