![]() ![]() The back of the clock has a removable wooden panel held on by a simple lever that reveals the one-day brass movement and twin bellows. There are a wide variety of cuckoo clock movements, including one or eight-day, with or without music and animations, and either mechanical or quartz – similar in many ways to watch movements. The bird nods in sync with the bellows and indicates the time at the top of the hour and calls once at the half-hour. Although a plastic bird provides a bit more animation, it would certainly look out of place on such a simple, traditional clock. This clock has the latter with hand-painted features. ![]() There are generally two types of cuckoo birds, either plastic with a moveable beak (and sometimes wings) or the more traditional hand-carved wooden variety. ![]() The cuckoo lives behind a castle-style wooden door over a nicely cut dark frame. To set the time, you simply move the minute hand in either direction. The hands are dark and openworked wood, matching the numerals, and are held in place by brass and steel hardware. The numerals are applied stained wood (a nice touch), while the outermost area and two internal rings are raised. ![]() The multi-level dial has large, dark Roman numerals taking up the majority of space within the lower level, much in the tradition of yesteryear clock towers. With watch reviews, this is usually the “Dial and Hands” section, but I’m going with “Dial and Bird.” It’s the little things in life. While the cuckoo is calling, you’ll notice that the right weight descends fairly quickly to power the animation. On the left and right walls, about a third from the roof and near the back, are two sizeable holes for the bellows to release their sound. Behind the chains is the pendulum, which hooks onto a bottom loop from the movement, and the night shut-off knob is to the left of the chains. It’s a one-day movement, so the clock needs to be hung about 1.8 metres off the floor to get the full 24 hours. The first and third chain have hooks for the metal weights, which look like black fir tree cones, and the second and fourth are pulled to wind them back up. Underneath, in front of the pendulum, are four holes where the stainless steel chains descend from the movement. Many clocks have a night-time shutoff, which silences the bird either by a switch on the side or a push/pull mechanism at the bottom (some even have light-sensing switches). The pendulum has a counterweight near the bottom that can be moved up or down to adjust the timekeeping – up makes it faster, down makes it slower. Winding is achieved by pulling the adjacent chains to return the weights to the bottom of the clock. Eight-day clocks are the same but can endure for eight days, while music/animated clocks have three weights. One-day clocks have two weights and chains long enough for a 24-hour descent before hitting the floor. Unlike a watch with a mainspring and balance wheel, hanging weights and a pendulum power most cuckoo clocks (there are exceptions for tabletop clocks). There are four types of movements/clocks, broken up into two main categories: one-day and eight-day, with or without music (and twirling figures like dancers, bell ringers, etc.). Original clocks had wooden gears, but modern movements are brass and relatively unchanged for over a century. A typical view of the Black Forest region, Baden-Württemberg in southwest Germany – source: Wikimedia Although intricate clocks existed prior to this, with animated dancers and such, Ketterer’s was the first with twin bellows to create the familiar cuckoo call coupled with a carved wooden bird. A handful of other descriptions appeared in handbooks and illustrations, but it was German clockmaker Franz Anton Ketterer who made the first official German cuckoo clock in the village of Schonwald. In 1629, a description of a “coo coo clock” was attributed to Prince Elector August von Sachsen by a German nobleman. The origins of clockmaking in the Black Forest are a bit murky but go back to the mid-17 th century. BackgroundĪ mountainous region in southwest Germany (bordering France) is known as the Black Forest, densely populated with a variety of tree species and open pastures offering panoramic views. Specifically, a walnut bird house model from clockmaker Rombach & Haas, established in 1894. So, let’s take a look at one of the most famous clock styles from the Black Forest region of Germany – the mechanical cuckoo clock. In the same vein, we also dip our toes into the world of mechanical clocks, covering haute horology pieces like the creature-inspired MB&F TriPod Table Clock and futuristic De Bethune x Dream Watch 6. The vast majority of what we cover are mechanical wristwatches, although every now and then we’ll highlight something intriguing like the quartz Citizen Calibre 0100 with an accuracy of +/- 1 second per year. Monochrome is all about watches, of course. ![]()
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