First modern cuckoo clocks An
Augsburg merchant named
Philipp Hainhofer (1578–1647) wrote the first known description of a modern cuckoo clock in 1629, many decades before clockmaking was established in the Black Forest. . He visited the Kunstkammer (
Cabinet of curiosities) of Prince Elector
August von Sachsen in
Dresden. One of the rooms contained a chiming clock with a moving bird, a cuckoo announcing every quarter of an hour which he described as "a beautiful chiming clock, inside a cuckoo, indicating the quarter hours with its beak and call, the hours with its flapping wings and pour sugar from its tail". Hainhofer does not describe what this clock looked like and who built it. This piece is no longer part of the Dresden
Green Vault collection, but it appears in a 1619 inventory book as a "Clock with a cuckoo that yells. It stands on a black pedestal made of
ebony on the barber's chest". , a rooster, and a cuckoo figure are shown in the engraving. The Dresden timepiece should not have been unique, because the mechanical cuckoo was considered part of the known mechanical arts in the 17th century. The book's engraving shows all the elements of a mechanical cuckoo. The bird automatically opens its beak and moves both its wings and tail. Simultaneously, the clock imitates the whistle—call of the cuckoo, created by two organ pipes tuned to a minor or major third. Subsequently, cuckoo clocks appeared in regions that had not been known for their clockmaking. For instance, the
Historische Nachrichten (1713), an anonymous publication generally attributed to Court Preacher Bartholomäus Holzfuss, mentions a musical clock in the
Oranienburg palace in
Berlin. This clock played eight church hymns and had a cuckoo that announced the quarter hours.
First cuckoo clocks made in the Black Forest , c. 1780 (Deutsches Uhrenmuseum, Inv. 2008–024) It is not clear who built the first cuckoo clocks in the Black Forest, but there is unanimity that the unusual clock with the bird call very quickly conquered the region. By the middle of the 18th century, several small clockmaking shops between
Neustadt and
Sankt Georgen were making cuckoo clocks out of wood and shields decorated with paper. After a journey through south-west Germany in 1762, Count
Giuseppe Garampi, Prefect of the
Vatican Archives, remarked: "In this region large quantities of wooden movement clocks are made, and even if they were not completely unknown earlier, they have now been perfected, and one has started to equip them with the cuckoo's call." Especially 18th century cuckoo clocks, in which all the parts of the movement, including
gears, were made of wood. They are extremely rare, Wilhelm Schneider was only able to list a dozen of pieces with wooden movements in his book
Frühe Kuckucksuhren (Early Cuckoo Clocks) (2008). The cuckoo clock remained a niche product until the middle of the 19th century, made by a few specialized workshops. between two clock peddlers (
Uhrenträger, literally "clock carriers", who carried the dials and movements on their backs displayed on huge backpacks), Joseph Ganther from Neukirch (Furtwangen) and Joseph Kammerer from
Furtwangen, who met a travelling Bohemian merchant who sold wooden cuckoo clocks. When they returned home, they brought with them this novelty, since it had caught their eyes, and show it to Michael Dilger from Neukirch and Matthäus Hummel from Glashütte, who were very pleased with it and began to copy it. Its popularity grew in the region and more and more clockmakers started making 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 such a clock was used as a sample to copy and produce Black Forest cuckoo clocks. Bohemia had no fundamental clockmaking industry during that period. The second story is related by another priest, Markus Fidelis Jäck, in a passage extracted from his report
Darstellungen aus der Industrie und des Verkehrs aus dem Schwarzwald (Descriptions of the Industry and Transport of the Black Forest), (1810) said as follows: "The cuckoo clock was invented (in the early 1730s) by a clock-master [Franz Anton Ketterer] from
Schönwald. 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". Unfortunately, neither Steyrer nor Jäck quote any sources for their claims, making them unverifiable. As time went on, the second version became the more popular, and is the one generally related today, though evidence suggests its inaccuracy. This type of clock is much older than clockmaking in the Black Forest. As early as 1650, the mechanical cuckoo 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. In addition, 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 had not yet been born. This statement was corroborated by 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) in which he 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 having been built in the
Franconia and
Lower Bavaria area, in the southeast of Germany, (forming nowadays the northern two-thirds of the Free State of Bavaria), in the direction of
Bohemia (nowadays the main region of the
Czech Republic), which he notes, lends credence to the Steyrer version. Although the idea of placing an automaton cuckoo bird in a clock to announce the passing of time did not originate in the Black Forest, the cuckoo clock as it is known today (in its traditional form decorated with wood carvings) comes from this region located in southwest
Germany. The Black Forest people who created the cuckoo clock industry developed it, and still come up with new designs and technical improvements. 's marketplace at its top, Karl Kern,
Schönwald, c. 1860 (Deutsches Uhrenmuseum, Inv. 2019–012) 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 region. Around 1800, the first lacquered shield clocks appeared, the so-called
Lackschilduhr ("lacquered shield clock"), 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 painted wood which contained the door for the cuckoo. These usually depicted floral motifs, like roses, and often had a painted column, on either side of the chapter ring, others were decorated with fruits as well. Some pieces also bore the names of the bride and bridegroom on the dial, which were normally painted by women. There was no cabinet surrounding the clockwork in this model. This design was the most prevalent during the first half of the 19th century. '' style cuckoo clock with two columns at the front flanking the dial, Black Forest, second half 19th century (Deutsches Uhrenmuseum, Inv. 09–2018) By the middle of the 19th century, Black Foresters began to experiment with a variety of forms. In the 1840s, - and sometimes a cuckoo was included in these simple "
Biedermeier clocks". On the other hand, from the 1860s until the early 20th century, cases were manufactured in a wide variety of styles such as; Neoclassical or Georgian (certain pieces also displayed a painting),
neo-Gothic,
neo-Renaissance,
neo-Baroque,
Art Nouveau, etc., becoming a suitable decorative object for the bourgeois home. These timepieces are less common than the popular ones looking like gatekeeper-houses (
Bahnhäusle style clocks) and they could be mantel, wall or bracket clocks. However, the popular house-shaped
Bahnhäusleuhr ("railway-house clock") virtually forced the discontinuation of other styles within a few decades. File:KM - Kuckucksuhr 1790.jpg|Lacquered shield cuckoo clock painted with roses, 19th century File:Picture frame cuckoo clock, ca. 1870.jpg|Picture frame timepiece, c. 1870. Enamel dial in a rectangular painting on a sheet metal: a hunter lies in wait for a hovering bird of prey, while two boys look at the tree stump in which the camouflage cuckoo's door is located (Deutsches Uhrenmuseum, Inv. 05–0962) File:Biedermeier style cuckoo clock.jpeg|
Biedermeier syle piece without the two columns at the front, second half 19th century File:Cuckoo clock, ca. 1885.jpg|A neo-Baroque spring driven, mantel clock, attributed to
Johann Baptist Beha, c. 1885. Original door missing (Deutsches Uhrenmuseum, Inv. 15–3833) File:Cuckoo clock, Black Forest, ca. 1890.jpeg|A neo-Renaissance example, dial with cartouches of Roman numerals, c. 1890 (Deutsches Uhrenmuseum, Inv. 09–3936) File:Cuckoo clock with echo, ca. 1890.jpg|Castle-like ruins clock case with echo. There is a second smaller cuckoo partially visible in the sentry box at left, c. 1890 (Deutsches Uhrenmuseum, Inv. 1995–638). File:Cuckoo clock, ca. 1880.jpg|An
eclectic style piece, combining Gothic and oriental decorative motifs, like the two
dragons on its curved roof. Fürderer, Jaegler und Cie,
Neustadt, c. 1880 (Deutsches Uhrenmuseum, Inv. 07–3772) File:Cuckoo clock, 1885.jpg|Another eclectic style example, case designed by Robert Bichweiler and crafted by Johann Winterhalder in Urach. The movement comes from Beha und Söhne in Eisenbach, 1885 (Deutsches Uhrenmuseum, Inv. 07–0325).
Bahnhäusle style, a successful design from Furtwangen 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. His 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 satisfied 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. But despite intensive campaigns by the Clockmakers School, sheet metal fronts decorated with oil paintings (or coloured lithographs) never became a major market segment because of the high cost and labour-intensive process, hence they were only produced from the 1850s until around 1880, whether wall or mantel versions. 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. More than a year later, on 20 January 1856, another respected Furtwangen-based cuckoo clockmaker,
Theodor Ketterer, sold one to Joseph Ruff in
Glasgow. 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. For example, numerous exhibitors at the trade exhibition in
Villingen in 1858 offered cuckoo clocks in the
Bahnhäuschenkasten or
Bahnwartshaus. And in the annual report of the Furtwangen Clockmakers School of 1857/58 is stated: "The cuckoo clock therefore found a very special market again as soon as the
Bahnhäuschen, which was so very suitable for it, was used as a clock case." By 1862, 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. 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 19th century, a few models which featured weights cast in the shape of a
Gnome and other curious forms. Thanks to Eisenlohr's design, the cuckoo clock became one of the most successful Black Forest products within a few years. In a report on the exhibition of local products at the
1873 Vienna World's Fair, Karl Schott, the then head of the
Furtwanger Landesgewerbehalle (Furtwangen State Trade Hall), wrote "that today the cuckoo clock is one of the most sought-after clocks in the Black Forest". catalogue showing three different models. The one at left, in the
Bahnhäusle style. The other two, profusely decorated with wood carvings, are evolutions from the original
Bahnhäusle. These are usually known today as "carved". By 1860, the
Bahnhäusle style had started to develop away from its original, "severe" graphic form, and evolved toward the well-known case with three-dimensional woodcarvings, like the
Jagdstück ("hunt piece", design created in
Furtwangen in 1861), a cuckoo clock with a carved oak foliage and hunting motives, such as trophy animals, guns and powder pouches. Only ten years after its invention by Friedrich Eisenlohr, all variations of the house-theme had reached maturity.
Bahnhäusle timepieces and its variations were also available as a mantel clock, but not as many compared to the wall version. These ornate timepieces were not made by one clockmaker only, otherwise such a complex product could not have been produced at acceptable prices. There were numerous specialists who assisted the clockmakers. In 1873, Karl Schott reported on the division of labour at the Vienna Exhibition: "The birds are mostly carved and painted by women. The pipes are made by a pipe maker. In addition to a number of master craftsmen, there are also a number of large companies involved in the manufacture of cuckoo clocks, and the cuckoo clock maker rarely makes them himself. Rather, he obtains the movements, reworks them with precision, attaches the bellows and pipes and thus puts the finished movement in the case." in the late 19th century. The miniature Swiss chalets date back to the beginnings of artistic wood carving in
Brienz, in the early 19th century. The Brienzerware chalet became a popular
souvenir, allowing tourists to take home an explicit reminder of a quintessential Swiss structure, though some were rather grand in scale, measuring three or more feet across. Many of these chalets, crafted in different sizes, doubled as music boxes, jewellery boxes, decorative objects, timepieces, etc. Some of those table clocks had also the added feature of a cuckoo bird or the tandem composed of a cuckoo and quail. Eventually,
Black Forest makers incorporated the chalet style to their production in the 1900s, as seen in some catalogues from that decade, and still remains a popular choice, along with the carved ones, among buyers of this
cult item. Cases are usually made after the traditional farmhouses of different regions, such as the
Black Forest,
Swiss Alps,
Emmental,
Bavaria and
Tyrol. They often have a musical movement, as well as moving figurines and some other elements. Contrary to popular belief, Switzerland is not the birthplace of the cuckoo clock. It is a circa 1785
George III bracket clock, eight-day time, three-
fusee, verge escapement, which announces the quarters on eight bells and gives the hours on a deep toned cuckoo, pull quarter repeat on command. The two pipes and bellows for the bird's sound are located at the base of the case, below the movement. Those pipes are placed horizontally, the same position seen in early Black Forest cuckoos. Both the dial and the elaborately engraved back plate, read: "Higgs y / Diego Evans / Londres". Robert Higgs and his son Peter were in partnership together as Robert and Peter Higgs, and later, between 1780 and 1785 with James Evans, who sometimes styled himself in Spanish as Diego Evans. They traded musical and other complex clocks, many for the Spanish market. In the mid-20th century, Camerer, Cuss & Co., London, a retailer of Black Forest clocks, etc., produced a few different models in the shape of a half-timbered
Tudor style house. The bird was cast
aluminum with movable beak and fixed wings and the weights were cylindrical, rather than pine-cone shaped. They were featured in a
Pathé News newsreel in 1950. According to author Terence Camerer Cuss, the company hoped to produce them in large quantities, but due to the high manufacturing cost, only fifty were made between 1949 and 1951. One of them, marked "01", was presented by the maker to the then
Prince Charles in 1949 and is part of the
Royal Collection.
In the United States Cuckoo clocks have been imported to the US by German immigrants for a long time, especially in the 19th century. There are two well-known cuckoo clock manufacturers in the USA: The New England Cuckoo Clock Company was founded in 1958 by W. Kenneth Sessions Jr. and operated in
Bristol, Connecticut. The design of the models is clearly American. The clocks were made with Hubert Herr clockworks that were imported from
Triberg. The printed and colored paper dials of the clocks are unmistakable, as is the early American design. The clocks were designed by Nils Magnus Tornquist. A kit watch was also offered. The second is the American Cuckoo Clock Company of
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which originated in the 1890s and imported German clocks. Eventually, the company switched to importing clockworks only and building cuckoo clocks in the USA.
In Portugal and Brazil timepiece, Portugal, 1950s. The same model is in the collection of
Senator John Heinz History Center. cuckoo clocks were made in
Portugal by Fábrica Nacional de Relógios A Boa Reguladora,
Reguladora from 1953, in
Vila Nova de Famalicão. Their models were in the Black Forest traditional style, with wood carved animals and leaves, and they could be spring-driven or weight-driven. Since its early years, the Portuguese clockmaking company was a fully integrated enterprise, making its own cases and movements (until 1995). In later catalogues, they sold cuckoos imported from Germany. In
Brazil, they were manufactured between the 1940s and the 1970s, marketed under different brand names such as Astro, Rei, H and Inrebra, the last two by INREBRA (Indústria de Relógios do Brasil Ltda.),
São Paulo. Same as the Portuguese cuckoos, they were inspired by Black Forest models, with wood carvings or cases in the shape of a
chalet.
In the Soviet Union and East Asia From the early 1950s until the 1990s, cuckoo clocks were made in the former
Soviet Union by the
Serdobsk Clock Factory, which were sold under the trademark
Маяк (
transliterated as Majak) from 1963. They produced a range of models with a distinctive style; a colourful front painted with floral and vegetal motifs, spruce branches in relief, Russian motifs, basic decoration or any, a deer head on top, etc. One model in particular, composed of a bird on top and five wine leaves was directly based on a Black Forest one. In
Japan, its production began in 1949. Those early timepieces, in the Black Forest style, were marketed under the trademark Poppo by Tezuka Clock Co., Ltd.,
Tokyo, and usually had stamped "Made in
Occupied Japan" on plate and dial. This term was used in items produced in the country between late 1945 and early 1952, after
World War II. In
China and
South Korea, cuckoo clocks also began to be manufactured in the second half of the 20th century.
Designer cuckoo clocks cuckoo clock by Pascal Tarabay, 2005. It replicates the outline of the traditional
Jagdstück ("hunt piece"). Diamantini & Domeniconi, Italy. The early 21st century has seen a revitalization of the iconic timepiece with designs, materials, technologies, shapes and colours never seen before in cuckoo clock manufacturing. These pieces are distinguished by its
functional and
minimalist aesthetic. Although simplified
designs with simple, clear lines had already been produced in the 20th century, the boom of designer cuckoo clocks was initiated in the 2000s (the first examples dating back to the 1990s), particularly in
Italy,
Germany and
Japan. There are a wide variety of models, many of them
avant-garde creations made of different materials and
geometric shapes, such as rhombuses, squares, cubes, circles, rectangles, etc. Without carving, these clocks are usually flat and smooth. Some are painted in a single colour while others are polychromes with abstract or figurative paintings, others include text and phrases, etc. About the clockwork, there are quartz, mechanical and sometimes, digital. ==Museums==