The art of
keeping time.
A photographical chronicle of the Gulf coast, imagined watchmakers, their philosophical heirs and the best years of an institution that may never have existed.
Download illustrated book (PDF) ↗Chapter 01 / Volume I
The Gulf and the Clock
At sundown the water in Pattaya Bay takes on the colors of old brass. Fishing vessels ride a gentle swell; shore lights appear one after another; and the ordinary work of an evening continues. A clockmaker could hardly ask for a better place to consider the difference between measurement and experience. The people who lived and worked along this coast long preceded our imagined university. Their real history deserves to be remembered alongside any invented campus story.
Royal Pattaya pictorial archive / fictional and reconstructed imagery
Chapter 02 / Volume I
The First Bench
Our archive begins with a table, three specialists and a misunderstanding. Prasert knew the people and the objects. Borel listened for the behavior of a balance wheel. Arakawa took measurements and waited for the numbers to settle. None of them could have agreed on a prospectus. Together, in this fictional account, they taught a practical craft and invented a school around it.
Royal Pattaya pictorial archive / fictional and reconstructed imagery
Chapter 03 / Volume I
Two Gurus, One Registrar
Mercer, an explorer and watchmaker, tells students to notice what a clock reveals and what life refuses to repeat. Maren teaches that people see their own histories in objects, then has the good judgment to read the fine print. Helen Waite, properly speaking, teaches neither philosophy nor horology. She nevertheless appears to be the only person who knows where the university keeps its accounts.
Royal Pattaya pictorial archive / fictional and reconstructed imagery
Chapter 04 / Volume I
Letters from the Shore
The imagined alumni have a shared habit of describing the university as if it were a destination and a question simultaneously. Some remember a pool, others a shop, and more than one recalls the same dinner from two different years. The Registrar has accepted all these testimonies under the heading “marginally consistent.”
Royal Pattaya pictorial archive / fictional and reconstructed imagery
Chapter 05 / Volume I
Alumni Forever
A diploma does not make the memory. In this case it is not even a degree: the Royal Pattaya certificate is commemorative novelty artwork. Yet there is something charming about an institution that invites its friends to remain curious about time and generous with their tools. Once a Royal Pattayian, always a Royal Pattayian.
Royal Pattaya pictorial archive / fictional and reconstructed imagery
Chapter 06 / Volume I
The Last Page
What survives a university is not its stationery. It is the questions that its students continue asking and the skill they take into the world. Did the imagined founders mean to create a school of philosophy? Probably not. Did they accidentally give watchmakers a place to think about what they were doing? The archive insists they did. It closes, as the day does, with the sound of a watch still running.
Royal Pattaya pictorial archive / fictional and reconstructed imagery
Colophon
A book about a place that lives in stories.
The Royal Pattaya Review is creative fiction set against researchable real history. Its campus, personalities, episodes and photographs are artistic inventions. See the historical source links on the history page.