Arne Jacobsen Wall Clocks: Bankers, Roman, Station, City Hall

Arne Jacobsen drew wall clocks for four separate buildings, and all four drawings are still made at Ø29 cm. At a shared diameter the decision stops being about size and turns into a question about the dial: which set of markings you want to read every day, and from how far away. Bankers, Roman, Station and City Hall answer that differently, and the differences are easy to miss in a catalogue photograph.

Four commissions, four dials

The oldest of the group is Station, drawn in 1941 for the Danish electrical manufacturer LK. A year later came Roman, made for Aarhus Town Hall, the civic building Jacobsen worked on with Erik Møller. City Hall followed in 1956 for Rødovre Town Hall, where it formed part of the architect's total concept for the new building, the same drawing exercise that produced its handles, lamps and signage. The youngest is Bankers, made in 1971 for the National Bank of Denmark, the last large commission of Jacobsen's career.

That order matters, because each dial was drawn for a room with a known reading distance. A station hall, a council chamber and a banking floor do not ask the same thing of a clock face. The versions produced today by Rosendahl Design Group follow the original drawings, so the four dials still carry the logic of the buildings they were made for, now at a domestic scale.

The four Ø29 cm clocks compared

Every one of them shares a case built from a mineral glass lens, an aluminium housing and ABS, and every one runs on a battery movement. The table below sets out what actually separates them.

Which dial reads fastest across a room

Legibility at distance is not simply a matter of how much information a dial carries. It is a matter of how little decoding the eye has to do. On that measure the four separate cleanly.

• Station is the quickest to name an exact time. A full ring of Arabic numerals means no counting, and the black aluminium top ring sharpens the outline of the dial against a pale wall, which is why the graphic reads from several metres away.
• City Hall is the quickest to read as a shape. With bars alone and no numerals, you register the angle of the hands rather than a number, which is fast for approximate time and slower if you need the minute precisely. Jacobsen's premise for it was that a clock should do its one job without distraction.
• Bankers sits between the two. It drops numerals but keeps a split minute track, so the ring itself is divided into readable groups and the minute hand always lands against a reference. In the white, black and red version the red hand does much of the work.
• Roman is the slowest to decode and the most rewarding to look at. Roman figures take a fraction longer to read, particularly on the left side of the dial, which makes this the one to choose where the clock is seen at close range or valued as much for its drawing as for its function.

If a clock is going at the far end of a hallway, Station or City Hall will serve you better. If it hangs above a desk or a dining table, the slower dials are no handicap at all.

Depth, weight and how they hang

All four are shallow, between 6 and 6.3 cm from wall to glass, and the case that supports the concave glass front is what gives these clocks their hovering look. Bankers, Roman and Station share a 6.3 cm depth (Station's case is also listed at 6.5 cm in height), while City Hall is the shallowest at 6 cm in both directions. On a wall that difference is small, but it changes how much shadow the case throws in raking daylight.

Weight is the bigger practical variable. Bankers at 1.36 kg, Roman at 1.35 kg and Station at 1.44 kg all want a proper fixing, ideally into a stud or a plugged masonry wall. City Hall Wall clock Ø29 cm is the outlier at 0.344 kg, light enough to go on plasterboard with far less thought, and worth knowing if you are hanging on a partition wall or in rented rooms. Care is the same across the range: a wipe with a dry, soft cloth, and nothing on the mineral glass lens that could scratch it.

Colour, and where each one belongs

Colour narrows the field as much as the dial does. Roman Wall clock Ø29 cm white/black and Station Wall clock Ø29 cm white/black are drawn in white and black, which keeps them close to the original civic and industrial dials and lets them sit against almost any wall. Bankers Wall clock Ø29 cm adds a red accent in its white and black version, or turns the whole face black, which is the quieter of the two on a dark wall.

City Hall is the one that behaves like a piece of colour. The current edition puts shades from Arne Jacobsen's own palette on both dial and case, in green and blue alongside the white and black, so the clock reads as a disc of colour first and an instrument second. It is the choice for a room where a white dial would look clinical.

Two more things worth knowing before you settle. Roman, Station and Bankers each run across several sizes, so a dial you like at Ø29 cm can be repeated smaller elsewhere in the house, down to Ø11 cm table versions that sit on a desk or bedside table. The Bankers dial is also used for a barometer, a thermometer and a hygrometer, which hang well as a row beside the clock itself. If you want to see the full range of formats before choosing, browse the Clocks collection.