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cuckoo clock

 
Dictionary: cuckoo clock
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n.
A wall or shelf clock that announces intervals of time with a sound imitative of a cuckoo's call and often with the simultaneous emergence of a mechanical bird from a small door.


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How Products are Made: How is a cuckoo clock made?
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Background

The cuckoo clock is a favorite souvenir of travelers in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and particularly the Black Forest region of Germany. The clock is prized for a number of its features. The outer worked wood case is usually made of beautiful dark wood that is intricately carved with folk and forest scenes. The clock itself is made in the premier clock-and watch-making area of the world. And, finally, there is the cuckoo and its fellows. On the hour (and often the half-and quarter-hour as well), the charming carved bird pops out of a door to sing the hour in a melodic "Cuckoo!Cuckoo!" call. He is often introduced or followed by a parade of townspeople, forest creatures, or other animals that circle through another door and seem to celebrate the passing of every hour and the timelessness of their carefully crafted clock home.

The cuckoo clock known today is the most popular form of ornamental clock—one that is decorative as well as functional. When the tiny wood cuckoo emerges to call the hour, two small pipes attached to two miniature bellows make his call. The sets of pipe-and-bellows are mounted on either side of the clock with slots cut through the wood frame opposite the bellow vents to allow the sound to be heard. Inside the clock, a finely made set of brass clockworks controls the time-telling. Two weights shaped like pine cones that dangle from the ends of chains and a pendulum that is tipped with a leaf add to the traditional appearance, although these are only decorative on modern clocks that are spring-driven.

History

The cuckoo clock has an impressive parent in the Black Forest clock. The provinces of Baden and Wuirttemburg (now the province of Baden-Wiirttemburg) lie deep in the Black Forest region of Germany. Winters there are long, dark, cold, and characterized by deep snowfalls. With forestry and agriculture limited during this season, a cottage industry in the production of clocks grew in the Black Forest. Glass-making was a traditional craft, and clock-making sprang indirectly from this when, in about 1640, a traveler introduced a simple Bohemian clock operated by three wheels on a train (continuous drive), a verge escapement (the device that allows the train to advance a controlled amount by restraining it with weights), and a foliot (a balance bar). The clock was not ornamented.

The local citizens learned how to copy the clock and make the tools to craft it. They also worked together as a group with specialists in frame-making, manufacturing the clockworks, making and painting dials, brass founding, making chains and gongs, finishing metal parts, and performing many supporting tasks. The clockmaker made his own patterns and styles; parts for his clocks were unique and not interchangeable with other makers. By the late 1700s, the clocks were a profitable export for the region and were sold as far away as Russia.

The cuckoo clock may have been invented in about 1730 by Franz Anton Ketterer, a well-known Black Forest clockmaker from Schonwald. The cuckoo's sound was simply incorporated in the contemporary clocks of the day. They had face shields—full front plates that were enameled with the face near the center—rather than the wood frame developed later. Ketterer's clocks were driven by suspended weights shaped like pine cones, and these were adapted to the wood-frame style later. Ketterer used the church organ pipe as the basis for the production of the cuckoo's sound, and his clock-making abilities were so skilled that the cuckoo clock became known for its reliability as a timepiece.

The variety of cuckoo clocks reflects clock-making styles of the time. A clock dating from 1770 may have a painted face shield with roses and castles. This was the English style of the day, but was popularized throughout southern Germany and Central Europe; the same design appears on the sides of painted barges. Soon, the decoration was modified to suit the targeted market. For instance, the French liked large bouquets of bright flowers and called the cuckoo clocks "Swiss clocks" even though most were made in Germany. Scandinavians preferred hexagonal or octagonal faces, while the Dutch and Belgians liked tin or porcelain dials. In England, the clocks were called "Dutch" clocks (possibly from "Deutsche," meaning German), and they were simple mahogany rims with glasses held in place with brass bezels.

By the mid-eighteenth century, cuckoo clocks moved from the peasant or cottage industry to factories. By 1850, a style called the "hunting lodge" or "chalet" style dominated; the frame shows a lodge at the base of the clock, the clock dial over the roof, and carved trees and animals rising above the dial to the top of the frame. In "The Cricket on the Hearth," author Charles Dickens describes a clock with the figure of a haymaker with a scythe who moves with the pendulum. One particular style called the "Surrerwerk" or whizzing work strikes with the sound of twelve blows like the sound of small hammers. Usually, the cuckoo clock had two drive trains, one for the clock movement and the other for the socalled striking train, or the sounds and actions produced with the striking of the hour.

The movements became standardized in style, size, and materials. European movements are of brass and steel, and American movements are brass. The numerals on the dial are painted in German gothic style. Modern cuckoo clocks have retained the suspended pine-cone weights. Some large cuckoo clocks made at the end of the nineteenth century also housed barometers. Later clocks from about 1900 have wood frames, brass wheel works, and a wooden carved cuckoo on a sweeping stand that shifted forward to chime the hour. Inlaid wood has also been used to make cuckoo clocks, notably those from Northern Italy in the Ampezzo region. Late in the twentieth century, the cuckoo clock entered the digital age when manufacturers began equipping some models with quartz clocks that play twelve different tunes, one for each hour, and an automatic shutoff to silence the bird for a programmable number of hours during the night.

Raw Materials

Wood is the critical raw material for the manufacture of cuckoo clocks, because the wood casing is the primary feature that distinguishes the cuckoo clock in appearance. Cuckoo clocks are made from the wood of the linden tree, a hardwood that grows in Europe. Some parts of the housing may also be made of walnut. Skilled wood workers purchase the linden and walnut woods well in advance so the wood can be aged for two years. Depending on what the craftsman wants, it may be purchased in logs with the bark removed or in block-like lengths.

The cuckoo clock is also distinguished by the cuckoo and its sounds. The pipes and bellows that make the cuckoo's call are also made of wood. Clocks that play tunes are fitted with music boxes. The music boxes and the mechanical movements for the clocks (as well as small parts like the clock's hands) are produced by specialized subcontractors. The lead pine cone weights and the leaf-shaped weight on the end of the pendulum are made of lead and are produced in metal foundries by pouring a melted lead alloy in tempered metal molds. The foundries that produce these weights are also experts in small, detailed metalwork.

Design

As the history of the cuckoo clock suggests, design of the clock and its highly recognizable parts is based on tradition. Clock manufacturers have developed their own styles of chalets and forest scenes for the wood work as well as particular "casts of characters" for the cuckoo bird itself and the villagers or animals that may share "action scenes" with the cuckoo. New lines or styles of clocks are not likely because customers buy cuckoo clocks for their traditional style. The addition of digital features increases the variety of music and bird songs that the clocks can produce, but clocks with digital enhancements have not yet proven to be more popular than traditional models.

The Manufacturing Process

  1. Manufacture of the cuckoo clock begins in the hands of the wood worker. The craftsman selects the pieces of wood to be used for the particular clock and cuts them to the approximate lengths and shapes he will need. Power tools and hand tools are used for this part of the process; hand tools may include measuring tools, saws, rasps, and files for shaping, drilling tools, abrasives including sandpaper, and adhesives and clamps. The box-like case or cabinet for the clock works is cut, fitted, and glued together.

    The outer frame—the decorative part of the clock featuring the traditional forest and chalet scene—begins with a stenciled design on paper. The craftsmen make and collect sets of stencils based on their own drawings and those that have been handed down. The sets of stencils are made for specific sizes of clocks. After choosing the stencil for the size and style of clock, the wood worker draws the design on the wood and begins carving and shaping the frame. When the frame and the case are complete, both are stained and left to dry.

  2. When the frame and case are dried, the clock is assembled by first mounting the movement in the case. In the old days of village manufacture, the craftsmen who carved the wood and assembled the clockworks probably lived in the same village. The clockmaker poured and handcrafted the internal workings of the clock himself and assembled them. Today, manufacturers buy preassembled clock movements, and the process is reduced to fitting it in the case and properly fixing it in place with wood screws or other fasteners.
  3. The sound-making devices are attached to the top of the clock. These include the pipes and bellows for the cuckoo sound and the music box. Attachments that are usually extensions of drive chains are linked to the sets of wire hooks and metal cams and pins that activate the cuckoo and any other moving figures and the doors. The cuckoo is connected to its bellows operation, and the other figures are mobilized by the strike movement. A third movement initiates the playing of the music box. Finally, the pendulum and weight chains are connected to the movement and the lead weights are clipped to the chain ends.
  4. The assembled clock is carefully packaged to protect the moving parts and the delicate carved framework. Individually boxed clocks are packed in cartons for shipping and distribution.

Quality Control

Quality control consists of only two steps. Quality is built into every cuckoo clock because each one is hand made. Quality is the mark of the craftsman, and, as with all handcrafted products, gifted and highly trained wood workers will not risk their reputations on poorly made clocks. The final quality step is a complete examination of the finished piece and a trial operation.

Byproducts/Waste

There are no byproducts from cuckoo clock manufacture, and waste is minimal. Some wood scraps and shavings result from crafting the case and carving the frame, but attentive selection of the right pieces of wood for the project and stencils that accentuate the character of the wood limit the volume of scrap. The wood is also too expensive for the wood workers to waste.

The Future

New cuckoo clocks are still among of the most sought-after souvenirs of vacations in the heart of Europe and especially in Germany's Black Forest region. In America, many families can trace their roots to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and other European localities where cuckoo clocks are traditional ornaments for the home. Consequently, there is a market in America for clocks that represent the best traditions of cuckoo-clock making.

Cuckoo clocks are also highly prized antiques. Hand-crafted clocks with "provenance" (a traceable history) are sought by collectors, but antique hunters also search for factory-made cuckoo clocks. Those dating from the 1850s are highly sought based on the name of the maker; names like Gustav Becker, the United Freiburg Clock Factory (which Becker joined by 1900), Winterhalder & Hofmeier, Kienzle, Junghans, and the Hamburg American Clock Company (which copied American-made clocks for sales in Germany) are among the most collectible. Typically, the antique market also injects life into sales of newly manufactured collectibles because they are more affordable.

Even though some models of cuckoo clocks are now ouffitted with quartz movements and electronics, part of the cuckoo clock's charm may be its old-fashioned mechanical movement. When paired with beautifully carved wood and rustic style, the spell of the cuckoo's song on the hour is guaranteed to bring smiles to those who prize childlike delights and exquisite craftsmanship for years to come.

Where to Learn More

Books

Bruton, Eric. The History of Clocks and Watches. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1979.

Coggins, Frank W. Clocks: Construction, Maintenance & Repair. Blue Ridge Summit, PA: TAB Books, Inc., 1984.

Fleet, Simon. Clocks. London: Octopus Books, Inc., 1972.

Hunter, John. Clocks: An Illustrated History of Timepieces. New York: Crescent Books, 1991.

Kadar, Wayne Louis. Clock Making for the Woodworker. Blue Ridge Summit, PA: TAB Books, Inc., 1984.

Lloyd, H. Allan. The Complete Book of Old Clocks. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1964.

Nicholls, Andrew. Clocks in Color. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1975.

Smith, Alan. The Antique Collector's Guides: Clocks and Watches. New York: Crescent Books, 1989.

Tyler, E. J. European Clocks. New York: Hawthorne Books, Inc., 1969.

[Article by: Gillian S. Holmes]


Games: Cuckoo Clock
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  • Platform: IBM PC Compatible
  • Release Date: 2001
  • Genre: Home
  • Style: Desktop Customization
WordNet: cuckoo clock
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Home > Library > Literature & Language > WordNet
Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: clock that announces the hours with a sound like the call of the cuckoo

Wikipedia: Cuckoo clock
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Cuckoo clock, a so-called Jagdstück, Black Forest, ca. 1900, Deutsches Uhrenmuseum, Inv. 2006-013

A cuckoo clock is a clock, typically pendulum-driven, that strikes the hours using small bellows and pipes that imitate the call of the Common Cuckoo in addition to striking a wire gong. The mechanism to produce the cuckoo call was installed in almost every kind of cuckoo clock since the middle of the eighteenth century and has remained almost without variation until the present.

Contents

Characteristics

One of the world's largest cuckoo clocks in the shape of a typical Black Forest house (Schonachbach) located in Triberg im Schwarzwald.
One of two Cuckoo pipes
Sound producer

The design of a cuckoo clock is now conventional. Most are made in the "traditional style" (also known as "carved") or "chalet" to hang on a wall. In the "traditional style" the wooden case is decorated with carved leaves and animals. Most now have an automaton of the bird that appears through a small trap door while the clock is striking. The bird is often made to move while the clock strikes, typically by means of an arm that lifts the back of the carving.

There are two kinds of movements: one-day (30-hour) and eight-day movements. Some have musical movements, and play a tune on a Swiss music box after striking the hours and half-hours. Usually the melody sounds only at full hours in eight-day clocks and both at full hours and half hours in one-day clocks. Musical cuckoo clocks frequently have other automata which move when the music box plays. Today's cuckoo clocks are almost always weight driven, though a very few are spring driven. The weights are made of cast iron in a pine cone shape and the "cuc-koo" sound is created by two tiny gedackt (pipes) in the clock, with bellows attached to their tops. The clock's movement activates the bellows to send a puff of air into each pipe alternately when the clock strikes.

In recent years, quartz battery-powered cuckoo clocks have been available. These do not have cuckoo bellows. As on mechanical cuckoo clocks, the cuckoo bird emerges from its enclosure and moves up and down, on some quartz clocks it also flaps its wings as it calls, but instead of the call being reproduced by bellows, the call is a digital recording of a cuckoo calling in the wild (with a corresponding echo). The cuckoo call is usually accompanied by the sound of a water fall and other bird call in the background. During the cuckoo call the double doors open and the cuckoo emerges as usual, but only at the full hour, and they do not have a gong wire. In musical quartz clocks, the hourly chime is followed by the replay of one of twelve popular melodies (one for each hour). Some musical quartz clocks also reproduce many of the popular automata found on mechanical musical clocks, such as beer drinkers, wood choppers, jumping deer, and angry wives beating lazy husbands. One thing that is unique about the quartz cuckoo clocks is that they include a light sensor, so that when the lights are turned off at night, they automatically silence the hourly chime. The weights are conventionally cast in the shape of pine cones made of plastic, as well as the cuckoo bird and hands. The pendulum bob is often another carved leaf. The weights and pendulum are purely ornamental though, as the clock is driven by battery power. As with mechanical cuckoo clocks, the dial is usually small, and typically marked with Roman numerals.

History

Mechanical cuckoo, 1650

The first cuckoo clocks

In 1629, many decades before clockmaking was established in the Black Forest,[1] an Augsburg nobleman by the name of Philipp Hainhofer (1578-1647) penned the first known description of a cuckoo clock.[2] The clock belonged to Prince Elector August von Sachsen.

In a widely known handbook on music, Musurgia Universalis (1650), the scholar Athanasius Kircher describes a mechanical organ with several automated figures, including a mechanical cuckoo. This book contains the first documented description -in words and pictures- of how a mechanical cuckoo works.[3] We must assume that Kircher did not invent the cuckoo mechanism, because this book, like his other works, is a compilation of known facts into a handbook for reference purposes. The engraving clearly shows all the elements of a mechanical cuckoo. The bird automatically opens its beak and moves both its wings and tail. Simultaneously, we hear the whistle - call of the cuckoo, created by two whistles of organ pipes, tuned to a minor or major third. There is only one fundamental difference from the Black Forest-type cuckoo mechanism: The functions of Kircher's bird are not governed by a count wheel in a strike train, but a pinned program barrel synchronizes the movements and sounds of the bird.

In 1669 Domenico Martinelli, in his handbook on elementary clocks "Horologi Elementari", suggests using the call of the cuckoo to indicate the hours.[4] Starting at that time the mechanism of the cuckoo clock was known. Any mechanic or clockmaker, who could read Latin or Italian, knew after reading the books that it was feasible to have the cuckoo announce the hours.

Subsequently, cuckoo clocks appeared in regions that had not been known for their clockmaking.

A few decades later, people in the Black Forest started to build cuckoo clocks.

The first cuckoo clocks made in the Black Forest

It is not clear who built the first cuckoo clocks in the Black Forest[5] but there is unanimity that the unusual clock with the bird call very quickly conquered the region. Already by the middle of the eighteenth century, several small clockmaking shops produced cuckoo clocks with wooden gears. So the first Black Forest cuckoo clocks were created between 1740 and 1750. They had hand-painted shields.

It is hard to judge how large the proportion of cuckoo clocks was among the total production of modern movement Black Forest clocks. Based on the proportions of pieces surviving to the present, it must have been a small fraction of the total production.[6]

About its murky origins, there are two main fables from the first two chroniclers of Black Forest horology which tell contradicting stories about the origin of the cuckoo clock:

The first is from Father Franz Steyrer, written in his "Geschichte der Schwarzwälder Uhrmacherkunst" (History of Clockmaking in the Black Forest) in 1796. He describes a meeting between two clock peddlers from Furtwangen (a town in the Black Forest) who met a travelling Bohemian merchant who sold wooden cuckoo clocks. Both the Furtwangen traders were so excited that they bought one. On bringing it home they copied it and showed their imitation to other Black Forest clock traders. Its popularity grew in the region and more and more clockmakers started producing them. With regard to this chronicle, the historian Adolf Kistner claimed in his book "Die Schwarzwälder Uhr" (The Black Forest Clock) published in 1927, that there is not any Bohemian cuckoo clock in existence to verify the thesis that this clock was used as a sample to copy and produce Black Forest cuckoo clocks. Bohemia had no fundamental clockmaking industry during this period.

The second story is related by another priest, Markus Fidelis Jäck, in a passage from his report "Darstellungen aus der Industrie und des Verkehrs aus dem Schwarzwald" (Description of Industry and Commerce of the Black Forest), (1810): "The cuckoo clock was invented (in 1730) by a clock-master (Franz Anton Ketterer) from Schönwald (Black Forest). This craftsman adorned a clock with a moving bird that announced the hour with the cuckoo-call. The clock-master got the idea of how to make the cuckoo-call from the bellows of a church organ". As time went on, the second version became the more popular, and is the one generally related today. Unfortunately, neither Steyrer nor Jäck quote any sources for their claims, making them unverifiable.

Early cuckoo clock, Black Forest, 1760-1780 (Deutsches Uhrenmuseum, Inv. 03-2002)

On the other hand R. Dorer pointed out, in 1948, that Franz Anton Ketterer (1734 - 1806) could not have been the inventor of the cuckoo clock in 1730 because he hadn't then been born. Gerd Bender in the most recent edition of the first volume of his work "Die Uhrenmacher des hohen Schwarzwaldes und ihre Werke" (The Clockmakers of the High Black Forest and their Works) (1998) wrote that the cuckoo clock was not native to the Black Forest and also stated that: "There are no traces of the first production line of cuckoo clocks made by Ketterer". Schaaf in "Schwarzwalduhren" (Black Forest Clocks) (1995), provides his own research which leads to the earliest cuckoos being in the "Franken-Niederbayern" area (East of Germany), in the direction of Bohemia (a region of the Czech Republic), which he notes, lends credence to the Steyrer version.

The legend that the cuckoo clock was invented by a clever Black Forest mechanic in 1730 (Franz Anton Ketterer) keeps being told over and over again. But all of this is not true.[7] The cuckoo clock is much older than clockmaking in the Black Forest. As early as 1650 the bird with the distinctive call was part of the reference book knowledge recorded in handbooks. It took nearly a century for the cuckoo clock to find its way to the Black Forest, where for many decades it remained a tiny niche product.

Although the idea of placing a cuckoo bird in a clock did not originate in the Black Forest, it is necessary to emphasize that the cuckoo clock as we know it today, comes from this region located in southwest Germany whose tradition of clockmaking started in the late seventeenth century. The Black Forest people who created the cuckoo clock industry developed it, and still come up with new designs and technical improvements which have made the cuckoo clock a valued work of art all over the world. The cuckoo clock history is linked to the Black Forest.

Even though the functionality of the cuckoo mechanism has remained basically unchanged, the appearance has changed as case designs and clock movements evolved in the Black Forest. In the beginning of the 19th century the now traditional Black Forest clock design, the "Schilduhr" (Shield-clock), was characterized by having a painted flat square wooden face behind which all the clockwork was attached. On top of the square was usually a semicircle of highly decorated wood which contained the door for the cuckoo. There was no cabinet surrounding the clockwork in this model. This design was the most prevalent between the end of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century. These clocks were typically sold from door to door by "Uhrenträger" (Clock-peddlers) who would carry the dials and movements on their backs displayed on huge backpacks.

About the middle of the nineteenth century till the 1870s, cuckoo clocks were also manufactured in the Black Forest type of clock known as "Rahmenuhr" (Framed-clock). As the name suggests, these rare cuckoo clocks consisted of a picture frame, usually with a typical Black Forest scene painted on a wooden background or a sheet metal, lithography and screen-printing were other techniques used. Other common themes depicted were; hunting, love, family, death, birth, mythology, military and christian religious scenes. Works by painters such as Johann Baptist Laule (1817-1895) and Carl Heine (1842-1882) were used to decorate the fronts of this and other types of Black Forest clocks. The painting was almost always protected by a glass and some models displayed a person or an animal with flirty eyes as well, being operated by a simple mechanism worked by means of the pendulum swinging. Most of them were wall clocks but a few were mantel clocks. The cuckoo normally took part in the scene painted, and would pop out in 3D, as usual, to announce the hour.

During the Victorian era until the twenties and according to the decorative tastes prevailing in each moment, when bourgeoisies began to buy clocks in Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical, Biedermeier (some models also included a painting of a person or animal with flirty eyes), Art Nouveau cases, etc., cuckoo clocks were made in the same style too. These Black Forest clocks, based on both architectural and home decorative styles, are much rarer than the popular ones looking like gatekeeper-houses (Bahnhäusle style clocks) and they could be mantel, wall or bracket clocks.

But the popular house-shaped Bahnhäusleuhr (Railroad house clock) virtually forced the discontinuation of other designs within a few years.

1850 – The Bahnhäusle clock, a design of the century from Furtwangen

Left: Railway-house clock by Friedrich Eisenlohr, 1850-1851; right: Kreuzer, Glatz & Co., Furtwangen, 1853-1854 (Deutsches Uhrenmuseum, Inv. 2003-081)

In September 1850, the first director of the Grand Duchy of Baden Clockmakers School in Furtwangen, Robert Gerwig, launched a public competition to submit designs for modern clockcases, which would allow homemade products to attain a professional appearance.

Friedrich Eisenlohr (1805-1854), who as an architect had been responsible for creating the buildings along the then new and first Badenian Rhine valley railroad, submitted the most far-reaching design.[8] Eisenlohr enhanced the facade of a standard railroad-guard’s residence, as he had built many of them, with a clock dial. His "Wallclock with shield decorated by ivy vines," (in reality the ornament were grapevines and not ivy) as it is referred to in a surviving, handwritten report from the Clockmakers School from 1851 or 1852, became the prototype of today’s popular Souvenir cuckoo clocks.

Eisenlohr was also up-to-date stylistically. He was inspired by local images; rather than copying them slavishly, he modified them. Contrary to most present-day cuckoo clocks, his case features light, unstained wood and were decorated with symmetrical, flat fretwork ornaments.

Eisenlohr's idea became an instant hit, because the modern design of the Bahnhäusle clock appealed to the decorating tastes of the growing bourgeoisie and thereby tapped into new and growing markets.

While the Clockmakers School was happy to have Eisenlohr’s clock case sketches, they were not fully realized in their original form. Eisenlohr had proposed a wooden facade; Gerwig preferred a painted metal front combined with an enamel dial. At the Villingen exhibition in 1858 many clockmakers presented clocks in the new style.

Characteristically, the makers of the first Bahnhäusle clocks deviated from Eisenlohr's sketch in only one way: they left out the cuckoo mechanism. Unlike today, the design with the little house was not synonymous with a cuckoo clock in the first years after 1850. This is another indication that at that time cuckoo clocks could not have been an important market segment.

Only in December 1854, Johann Baptist Beha, the best known maker of cuckoo clocks of his time, sold two cuckoo clocks, with an oil paintings on their fronts, to the Furtwangen clock dealer Gordian Hettich, which were described as Bahnhöfle Uhren ("Railroad station clocks").[9] More than a year later, on January 20, 1856, another respected Furtwangen-based cuckoo clockmaker, Theodor Ketterer, sold one to Joseph Ruff in Glasgow (Scotland, United Kingdom).

Concurrently with Beha and Ketterer, other Black Forest clockmakers must have started to equip Bahnhäusle clocks with cuckoo mechanisms to satisfy the rapidly growing demand for this type of clock. Starting in the mid-1850s there was a real boom in this market.

By 1860, the Bahnhäusle style had started to develop away from its original, “severe” graphic form, and evolve, among other designs, toward the well-known case with three-dimensional woodcarvings, like the "Jagdstück" (Hunt piece, design created in Furtwangen in 1861), a cuckoo clock with carved oak foliage and hunting motives, such as trophy animals, guns and powder pouches.[10]

By 1862 the reputed clockmaker Johann Baptist Beha, started to enhance his richly decorated Bahnhäusle clocks with hands carved from bone and weights cast in the shape of fir cones.[11] Even today this combination of elements is characteristic for cuckoo clocks, although the hands are usually made of wood or plastic, white celluloid was employed in the past too. As for the weights, there was during this second half of the nineteenth century, a few models which featured curious weights cast in the shape of a Gnome.

Only ten years after its invention by Friedrich Eisenlohr, all variations of the house-theme had reached maturity.

There were also Bahnhäusle clocks and its derived manufactured as mantel clocks but not as many as the wall versions.

The basic cuckoo clock of today is the railway-house (Bahnhäusle) form, still with its rich ornamentation, and these are known under the name of "traditional" (or carved); which display carved leaves, birds, deer heads (like the Jagdstück design), other animals, etc. The richly decorated Bahnhäusle clocks have become a symbol of the Black Forest that is instantly understood anywhere in the world.

Even today it is a favourite souvenir of travelers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The centre of production continues to be the Black Forest region of Germany, in the area of Schonach and Titisee-Neustadt, where there are several dozen firms making the whole clock or parts of it.

The cuckoo clock is often wrongly associated with Switzerland, as in the movie The Third Man. In the USA, this error is probably due to a story by Mark Twain in which the hero depicts the Swiss town of Lucerne as the home of cuckoo clocks.

The cuckoo clock became successful and world famous after Friedrich Eisenlohr contributed the Bahnhäusle design to the 1850 competition at the Furtwangen Clockmakers School.

The "Chalet" style, the Swiss contribution

The "Chalet" style originated at the end of the nineteenth century in Switzerland, at that time they were highly valued as Swiss souvenirs.

There are currently three basic styles, according to the different traditional houses depicted: Black Forest chalet, Swiss chalet (with two types the "Brienz" and the "Emmental") and finally the Bavarian chalet. Commonly found in the latter type of clock, is the incorporation of a Swiss music box, the most popular melodies are "The Happy Wanderer" and "Edelweiss" which sound alternately. Along with the common projecting cuckoo bird, this style of clock may also display other types of animated figurines as well, examples include woodcutters, moving beer drinkers and turning water wheels. Some "traditional" style cuckoo clocks feature a music box and dancing figurines as well.

Contemporary design

Nowadays certain cuckoo clocks are manufactured inspired by contemporary decorative styles, as much in Germany as in other countries, especially Italy. These modern clocks are characterized by its functionalist, minimalist and schematic design.

One of the most usual models presents the silhouette of the typical cuckoo clock with deer head, a bird, or the chalet type but, generally, without any sort of three dimensional woodwork, they only have a flat surface with a gap, or a little door, from which the bird pops out as usual. They are commonly painted in a monochrome way using different tones such as white, black, loud colours, etc.

Likewise there are other avant-garde designs with geometric shapes, such as rhombuses, squares, cubes, circles, rectangles, ovals, etc. Also without carving, these clocks are flat and smooth. Some are painted in a single colour while others are polychromes with abstract or figurative paintings, geometric shapes, multicolour lines and stripes, etc.

Some are quartz and some mechanical.

There are a number of artists in the Black Forest that are grounded in traditional master craftsmanship and are reinventing the cuckoo clock for modern tastes. The traditional Rahmenuhren and Schilduhren are reinterpreted to include painterly and woodcut pieces of art. With these new models, the cuckoo clocks becomes a kinetic sculpture as well as a functional object d' art.

Records

Another one of the world's largest cuckoo clocks in the shape of a traditional Black Forest chalet (Schonach)

Of the largest cuckoo clocks in the world, four of them are located in the Black Forest of Germany; in Höllsteig (Breitnau), Niederwasser (Hornberg), Schonach and Schonachbach (near Triberg). Another one is located in central Germany, specifically in Gernrode (where the "World's Largest Chocolate Cuckoo Clock" was made in 2006) and finally two of them are situated in the west of the country; in Sankt Goar where the world's largest free-hanging cuckoo clock is located and in Wiesbaden.

In America four of them exist as well, two are placed in the United States, in Frankenmuth, Michigan and Wilmot, Ohio, the other two are in Eduardo Castex and Villa Carlos Paz, both in Argentina.

Lastly in Japan, on the island of Hokkaidō, there is another one in Onneyu. Some of them have been awarded with the title of "World's Largest Cuckoo Clock" by the Guinness World Records.

As for the largest indoor cuckoo clocks, in 1986 the now-defunct manufacturer Dold built a custom clock for Champ's Clock Shop in Douglasville, Georgia, a bit smaller is the one currently manufactured by the Anton Schneider company. The smallest cuckoo clock in the world is made by the firm Hubert Herr.

Bibliography

  • Schneider, Wilhelm (1985): "Zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Kuckucksuhr." In: Alte Uhren, Fascicle 3, pp. 13 - 21.
  • Schneider, Wilhelm (1987): "Frühe Kuckucksuhren von Johann Baptist Beha in Eisenbach im Hochschwarzwald. In: Uhren, Fascicle 3, pp. 45 – 53.
  • Mühe, Richard, Kahlert, Helmut and Techen, "Beatrice" (1988): Kuckucksuhren. München.
  • Schneider, Wilhelm (1988): "The Cuckoo Clocks of Johann Baptist Beha." In: Antiquarian Horology, Vol. 17, pp. 455 – 462.
  • Schneider, Wilhelm, Schneider, Monika (1988): "Black Forest Cuckoo Clocks at the Exhibitions in Philadelphia 1876 and Chicago 1893". In: NAWCC, Vol. 30/2, No. 253, pp. 116 – 127 & pp. 128 - 132.
  • Schneider, Wilhelm (1989): "Die eiserne Kuckucksuhr." In: Uhren, 12. Jg., Fascicle 5, pp. 37 – 44.
  • Kahlert, Helmut (2002): "Erinnerung an ein geniales Design. 150 Jahre Bahnhäusle-Uhren" In: Klassik-Uhren, F. 4, pp. 26 - 30.
  • Graf, Johannes (2006): "The Black Forest Cuckoo Clock. A Success Story." In: NAWCC December Bulletin, pp. 646 - 652.

See also

Cuckoo Clock manufacturers

In alphabetical order:

External links

Notes

  1. ^ For the early history of Black Forest clockmaking, see Gerd Bender, "Die Uhrenmacher des hohen Schwarzwaldes und ihre Werke". Vol. 1 (Villingen, 1975): pp. 1-10.
  2. ^ Johannes Graf: The Black Forest Cuckoo Clock. A Success Story. NAWCC Bulletin, December 2006, p. 646.
  3. ^ Athanasius Kircher, Musurgia Universalis sive Ars magna consoni & dissoni, 2 Vol (Rome, 1650), here Vol. 2, p. 343f and Plate XXI.
  4. ^ Domenico Martinelli, Horologi Elementari (Venezia, 1669): p. 112.
  5. ^ Also refer to the discussion on the origin of the Black Forest cuckoo clock to: Richard Mühe, Helmut Kahlert and Beatrice Techen, Kuckucksuhren (München, 1988): pp. 7-14.
  6. ^ Helmut Kahlert, Die Kuckucksuhren-Saga, Alte Uhren, No. 4 (1983): pp. 347-353; here p. 349.
  7. ^ Johannes Graf: The Black Forest Cuckoo Clock. A Success Story. In: NAWCC Bulletin, December 2006, p. 651.
  8. ^ The credit for first discovering Eisenlohr's original design goes to Herbert Jüttemann. See Herbert Jüttemann, Die Schwarzwalduhr, 4th ed. (Karlsruhe, 2000): p. 242.
  9. ^ Citation based on Wilhelm Schneider "Frühe Kuckucksuhren von Johann Baptist Beha aus Eisenbach im Hochschwarzwald" (Remembering the design of a genius. 150 years of Bahnhaeusle clocks), Alte Uhren und moderne Zeitmessung, No. 3 (1987): pp. 45-53, here p. 51.
  10. ^ Ibid. Within a short time more orders for hunt pieces are recorded, specifically on October 30, November 7 and November 26, 1861.
  11. ^ As per Wilhelm Schneider, who had a chance to examine the account books of Beha. See Wilhelm Schneider, "Frühe Kuckucksuhren von Johann Baptist aus Eisenbach im Hochschwarzwald" (Early cuckoo clocks by Johann Baptist Beha of Eisenbach in the high Black Forest). Alte Uhren und moderne Zeitmessung. No 3 (1987): pp. 45-53, here p. 52.

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