Mick Jardine has always been a clockmaker at heart. He just didn't know it until serving an Army tour in Germany during the late 1960s and early 1970s. While serving in Germany, Jardine lived next door to a master clockmaker and began watching people carry clocks in and out of the neighbor's house.

Soon, the U.S. soldier struck a deal with the German clockmaker.

In exchange for the man teaching him how to create clocks, Jardine agreed to buy deodorant, ice cream, Levis and other items for the clockmaker from the military commissary. The first clock lesson proved to be an "aha" moment. Jardine's German teacher showed him how to take apart a clock so it could be cleaned.

When the master craftsman returned, he was amazed to learn that his American pupil had already cleaned and reassembled the clock. For his part, Jardine was overcome with emotion that day. He realized he was a natural, a clock man.

It's a moniker he holds nearly 40 years later at All About Time, the business he relocated to Holladay from Sugar House last year after 10 years on Highland Drive. At All About Clocks, Jardine buys, sells, repairs, restores and appraises all types of clocks. He deals in cuckoo clocks, grandfather clocks, mantle clocks, wall clocks, pocket watches, wrist watches, music boxes and barometers.

He also sales watchbands, batteries and even makes house calls. "I am linked with everything to do with time," Jardine says. As a lad growing up in a small Idaho town, the clockmaker never imagined that he would one day travel the world to buy clocks.

The clocks also provide Jardine with another kind of travel. He says each antique timepiece has its own energy and story to tell. He reveres the clockmakers who crafted such clocks.

"Being able to be near the clocks, to touch them and work with them, allows me to see inside the souls of the masters who made them. It provides me with a vehicle for time travel," he says. One of Jardine's biggest thrills was the opportunity he had to appraise clocks when the hit TV show "Antiques Roadshow" was filmed in Salt Lake City in 2006.

He examined thousands of clocks and watches that day, the best of which was an 1860 French mantle clock worth between 15,000 and 20,000. Jardine loves to talk about his trade. "If you want to talk about clocks, come and stay all day," he says.

He loves to share anecdotes such as the one involving a French statue clock he bought in Idaho. His daughter loved the clock, Jardine recalls, but he didn't realize how much. Some years later, he sold the clock to a dealer in Rexburg, Idaho.

When his daughter found out, she burst into tears. So Jardine immediately phoned the Rexburg dealer, only to learn the clock had already been sold to someone in Boise. The clockmaker then contacted the new owner, explained his plight and offered to buy back the clock.

He then drove up to Idaho to retrieve the treasured timepiece. He says the look on his daughter's face when she opened her Christmas present and saw the clock more than made up for the money he lost. Jardine tells another story of flipping through a magazine one day and seeing the description of a rare clock for sale in Arizona.

He called the owner to verify the description and couldn't believe his ears. When the owner e-mailed a picture of the clock, he couldn't believe his eyes. Jardine and his partner, ArDean Smart, immediately closed up shop and drove all night to buy the clock.

Upon arriving in Arizona, Jardine told the owner that the piece was rare and valuable. He says the owner wanted to sell the clock to someone who would give it a good home. The Utah duo assured him they would never sell the clock, a one-of-a-kind Grande Sonnerie grandfather clock.

On another occasion, Jardine received a call from a friend in Brigham City, who told him that some clock parts in a storage unit were being put on the auction block. Jardine was the only bidder and paid 200 for about 60 antique clocks and barometers that were disassembled. Apparently, the items had been owned by a man who owned a clock shop in California.

He became ill and moved to Utah and brought some of his inventory with him. When he died, no one in the family had any use for the "junk." To Jardine, the timepieces were treasure.

He is still in the process of restoring his finds. He does not understand the throwaway mind-set of today's society and does what he can to recycle clocks. "It's like savings lives to me," says Jardine, who has thought about being buried in a grandfather clock.

"Who knows, maybe I'll become famous in my own time." * All About Time is located at 2308 Murray Holladay Road. Return to Top Mick Jardine has always been a clockmaker at heart.