To know more about Black Forest cuckoo clocks

To know more about Black Forest cuckoo clocks

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

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"). 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.

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. 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.