Cuckoo Clocks

History of The Cuckoo Clock

The first Black Forest Cuckoo Clock was designed and made by Franz Anton Ketterer in the small village of Schönwald near Triberg, Germany, in the depths of the Black Forest. Ketterer managed to reproduce the cuckoo's call by the clever use of bellows producing two different sounds. Over the following years, the clock industry developed rapidly in the Black Forest. With their inventive genius, cleverness and dexterity, the inhabitants of the region employed the long winter months in making cuckoo clocks with richly hand carved decorations from various woods. In 1808 there were already 688 clockmakers and 582 clock peddlers in the districts of Triberg and Neustadt. During the long winter months, the farms were snowed-in and the people had a lot of time to create finely handcrafted cuckoo clocks of many styles with rich and varied carvings. The first clocks of the Black Forest, called “wood-beam clocks” were built around the year 1640, on a farm called Glashof. The clocks were made entirely of wood, including the movements. These original clocks evolved during the early 18th century into clocks known as the “Schilderuhr” which added hand painting, a minute hand, and chimes. All over the world the cuckoo clock is regarded a symbol of the Black Forest. Since the 18th century the clockmakers of their region have specialized in the development of this type of clock. The cuckoo clock became known throughout the world thanks to the peddling "clock carriers" from the Black Forest who literally carried the clocks on their backs in rucksacks. The first model of a cuckoo clock was a painted wooden clock. The clock was composed of an almost square board for the clock face and a raised semicircle, and was lavishly decorated. The cuckoo itself was to be found in the semicircle behind a small door. This type of clock was made from approximately 1730 on and was considered to be the specific clock style of the Black Forest. However, the exact origin of the cuckoo clock is not totally clear to this day. In the middle of the 19th century there were two principal visual forms of the cuckoo clock. The "framed clock", as its name suggests, had a strong wooden frame and a wide painted inner section to which the clock face was attached. The cuckoo was situated in the upper section of the decorated surface and was occasionally included in the other decorative scenes. The house-shaped basic form with wooden decorative elements was developed to include scenes from every day life. The earliest clock of this type had a wooden clock face with white numbers and hands and fir cone shaped weights. Today. vine leaves, animals and woodland plants as well as hunting scenes are features of this typical form of cuckoo clock. Dancing couples in traditional dress automatically move to music or the mill wheel rotates on the hour, while a farmer chops wood. The cuckoo itself moves its wings and beak and rocks back and forth when calling. Despite fluctuations in demand on the clock market, the production of the cuckoo clock in the Black Forest has remained uninterrupted to this day.