#Cuckoo clocks how to

Handmade by skilled craftsmen in the Black Forest region, German cuckoo clocks are today still largely made with the same techniques perfected hundreds of years ago, meeting the highest quality standards with regard to the clock movement and carvings. These clocks are intricately carved and painted, but the detail is in figures and architectural details (though there are still occasional items from nature). The Chalet style took off in German cuckoo clocks: the standard Chalet style clock depicts a Chalet, a farmhouse, a mill with a water wheel, or some other pastoral scene. Though often misrepresented as an invention of the Swiss, the cuckoo clocks made in Switzerland were primarily souvenir-quality and not up to the standard of the Black Forest clocks. The second innovation in the German cuckoo clock’s evolution was the Chalet style. More importantly, Ketterer began selling the clocks abroad, with the first German cuckoo clock arriving in Great Britain in 1856, and there was an immediate boom in German cuckoo clock market.įurther alterations were made, such as the Jagdstück design, which was the first known German cuckoo clock with a hunting motif (including deer heads and other animals). Soon thereafter clockmakers like Theodor Ketterer would do more three-dimensional woodcarvings. First, one extremely well-known clockmaker, Johann Baptist Beha, painted the plain wood facade, introducing color into the clocks. With so many people working on the Bahnhäusle clock it quickly began to evolve. Friedrich Eisenlohr, an architect who built railways, built a design called “Wallclock with shield decorated by ivy vines.” This design was so beloved and so iconic that it quickly became the rage in all Black Forest clockmaking: it is called the Bahnhäusle clock.

In 1850, the director of the Grand Duchy of Baden Clockmakers School, Robert Gerwig, launched a public competition for modern (at the time) designs. While not all German clocks featured the signature cuckoo and coo-coo sound that defines the type, by the late 1700s the sound was inextricably intertwined with the ornate clocks that we all love today.Īs German cuckoo clocks grew in popularity, three clockmakers would rise to become synonymous with cuckoo clocks: Franz Anton Ketterer, Michael Dilger and Matthaus Hummel, who created some of the signature features that are still popular today.

#Cuckoo clocks how to

The clock-master got the idea of how to make the cuckoo-call from the bellows of a church organ' This craftsman adorned a clock with a moving bird that announced the hour with the cuckoo-call. The most reliable story from German history about the provenance of the German Cuckoo Clock comes from a priest, Markus Fidelis Jack, who wrote “'The cuckoo clock was invented (in 1730) by a clock-master from Schönwald. The earliest German cuckoo clocks are believed to be Shield Cuckoo Clocks, and made between 17. By 1669, a clockmaker wrote a handbook on construction of handmade German clocks which suggests “the call of the cuckoo to indicate the hours.”Īlthough it is not clear how clock making was established in the Black Forest of Germany, it soon became the hub of all German cuckoo clock manufacturing.

German cuckoo clocks as we now think of them can be traced back to the Black Forest region of Germany in the 1700s, but German prototype cuckoo clock goes all the way back to 1629 and belonged to a Bavarian Prince Elector, August von Sachsen. All of the German cuckoo clocks for sale in our marketplace are as unique as our customers that buy them. Some of the most prominent brands we carry, who are all highly esteemed manufacturers of hand-carved and hand-painted German cuckoo clocks include companies like Hand Carved Clocks by Hones, Chalet Clocks by Schneider, Vintage Clocks by Herr, or Modern Cuckoo Clocks by Rombach & Haas, and several more.