Richard Dunbrack - Artist & Collector

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Folk artist Richard Dunbrack is best known for his funky clocks, fabricated in whimsical ways from
significant period artifacts and found objects. But he also makes sculpture and furnishings ranging from
cupboards to tables, armoires and hall trees. Each piece is a conglomeration of the unusual and unexpected.

Dunbrack often incorporates his clocks into furnishes such as the dials that came from tower clocks in
Prague that he fashioned into a table for a beach house in Maine. A clock may incorporate a piece of
antique bridge railing, fragments of a Victorian house or a bronze doll’s head. Some of the clocks are just
clocks, often tower clocks, and always outlandish.

Dunbrack is by nature a collector. In additional to gathering salvage, the artist is also an avid collector of
vintage cars. He became a craftsman 13 years ago after a traditional education at Wentworth and a career in
the defense industry. As a charter pilot, he began to collect things when he would have to fill the hours
waiting at destin-ations without much to do. “To fill the time, I began to explore buildings and collect
salvage,” he said. “Over time I accumulated masses of stuff and began to create my work.”

“In my mid-thirties, I recognized that the happiest time of my life had been in my youth,” he says.
“Creating zany clocks and furnishings became a way to play like a kid, while still growing and making a
good living. I didn’t quit my day job until I had a series of commissions lined up for my handiwork.”

Dunbrack calls his business The Thieving Magpie for the scavenger crow’s penchant for stealing shiny
objects from everywhere, including the nests of other birds, and bringing the goods back to his own nest.

Whether the purchaser is a rock star or a corporate CEO, Dunbrack creates eccentric pieces that are truly
one of a kind. He builds eclectic marble game consoles that stand in the offices of corporate giants. The
roster of clients includes Andy Reid, Coach of the Philadelphia Eagles and Rod Brind’Amour, Captain of
the Carolina Hurricanes. A dining room table with the look of a sleigh was created for a ski resort in Aspen.

The list goes on and on.

Dunbrack’s workshop is home to scores of clock dials, ladders, rakes, antique bicycles, porch posts and other conglomerations of wood, metal and stone that will
become part of his creations. As a pilot, he has a propensity for propellers and dozens of them are included among the collections.

Dunbrack builds about a hundred pieces of furniture, with and without clocks embedded in them, each year. There is no template for any of the artist’s work – each
piece is unique. The composite of artifacts in each of his creations is astounding even to the most experienced student of folk art.

It is impossible to miss the artist’s home when driving down his rural Oak Bluffs street. On the front of the house hangs one of his clocks, about one and a half stories
in height, that keeps time as exactly as Big Ben.

For a look at Dunbrack’s whimsical work, visit his website at www.thethieving-magpie.com. His work can be viewed by appointment at his Vineyard home (call 508-
693-8395), or at his studio in Concord.