- How did this all start, for you?
- I think it started because
I was born an old man, basically.
My name is Brittany Nicole Cox, you can call me Nico.
I'm an antiquarian horologist, and I'm here today
answering questions for Atlas Obscura.
How do you describe your profession to someone you just met?
An antiquarian horologist is ... well,
it's kind of a nebulous title really, because
it refers to anybody who works on horological objects,
but obviously antiquated items,
so horological antiquities.
(bell rings)
All I have to say is, "You've seen 'Hugo,' right?"
And usually a lot of people have and then I just say
I'm like the kid, but I'm not an orphan and I don't
live in a train station.
My life is ... reasonably magical.
Although, you know, hopefully there's no tragedies.
What does a typical day of work look like for an
antiquarian horologist?
My day can be quite varied.
Some days I'm working on re-feathering a tiny singing bird.
Some days I'm recovering bellows and
restoring the lungs of that bird.
Other days, maybe I'm working on an antique clock,
maybe it needs a new wheel, or a new gathering pallet,
or something of that nature.
So, my day is very varied
depending on what type of object I'm working on.
What is the oldest tool in your workshop,
and what does it do?
That is a really good question.
I actually do not know how old my oldest tool is.
I have a lot of tools.
I have thousands of tools.
Everything from a cat whisker used to balance,
or poise, balance wheels to a rose engine, which is
a massive ... it's not massive, but it's probably one of
my larger machines ... that's used to create
complex geometric patterns on metal.
The rose engine is from the 1930s.
I have older machines.
I have a Francis pantograph engraver
from the late 19th century.
So I have a number of tools.
I could never really say what the oldest one was.
What do you think about when you're doing
labor-intensive tiny work?
Is it nothing? Is it "don't fuck up...don't fuck up...don't fuck up?"
Yeah, of course it's that.
It really depends on what I'm doing.
Maybe I'll be thinking about, you know, back to my
existential thoughts about existential risk.
You know, I could just even be thinking about how
I'm not home soon enough to feed my cats.
His name is Baxter Sebastian Sterling,
also known as Mr. Moustache Pistachio.
Sometimes you really have no room to think about
anything other than exactly what it is that you're doing.
It requires all of your focus and all of your attention.
But yeah, the last thing you want to hear is your
horologist say "Fuck."
Do any of your projects, automata, contraptions smell weird?
Ooh, yes.
Sometimes you find a lot of ... what we sometimes call
"human" inside old watchbands and things like that.
Definitely has this musty smell that you might even
feel is reminiscent of a thrift store and vintage clothes.
And there's also the smell of like, old putrefying whales
because whale oil was used to lubricate mechanisms for
a really long time, so sometimes you even find bottles
of whale oil that is still good ... still fresh. (laughs)
Listening to a music box play "Für Elise"
gives me goosebumps, but playing the song on Spotify
does nothing for me ... why is that?
(music box playing)
I think it's really because you're having
this tactile experience.
There is something very special about the fact that you
have these tiny steel teeth that are all cut to a very
specific length and shape and each one is tuned and
resonates in a different note, and when it's plucked by
a rotating cylinder with tiny pins that have been
programmed to play the song for you, on demand, when you
push the button and you wind it up.
There's something really special about that.
It's almost ethereal.
Do you wear a watch?
If yes, what kind of watch and why this watch?
If no, really?
Well, I'll tell you this.
I didn't wear anything but a Casio for many years
because I couldn't afford a really good watch.
I had a ten dollar thrift store watch that I just
changed the battery in.
Today I am not wearing that watch though.
I recently got a really cool
Ernest Borel kaleidoscope watch.
I had been wanting one with a date and automatic module.
I don't have to wind this, which is pretty fancy.
If you like mechanical watches, it's pretty fun.
How have the years you've spent honing this particular
skill-set prepared you for survival in a
postapocalyptic world.
I think that if we're in a postapocalyptic, AI-driven world,
I'm hoping that the artificial intelligent gods
of the future will take pity on me, knowing that
I preserved their ancestors.
How has your work changed your relationship to time?
Well, it's made me painfully more aware of time,
and also how time affects us, how it passes,
how things change and degrade and, you know, I spend so much
of my day trying to reverse the effects of time on something
that was made to catalog the passing of time.
It's quite complicated.
- Why is it your specialty?
- I love automata.
They were always kind of my favorite objects within this
history and I think because they carry
so much of our personality, so much of our human spirit,
these were really interesting things that were made to
investigate a lot of philosophical questions.
They were meant to test the limits of our
creative and cognitive capacities as human beings, and
I just think that the history and what it says about us
is probably the most important message,
maybe, from our past that we have.
Uh, yeah, okay, right, yes, that's fine.
I feel fine about this ... okay.