Clocks · Clock
Clock by Georg Gfell, Germany, 1750
- Maker / attribution
- Georg Gfell (creator)
- Date
- 1750
- Historical period
- Precision & Scientific Horology (1750 – 1850)
- Country of origin
- Germany
- Place
- Germany
- Object type
- Clock
- Holding institution
- German Clock Museum
- Accession / object no.
- Museu_ProvidedCHO_museum_digital_56269__technical_number_
- Catalogue title (original)
- Holzräderuhr, Schwarzwald, 1. Hälfte 18. Jahrhundert, Schild: Georg Gfell, Urach, um 1750 (German)
Record summary
Held and catalogued by German Clock Museum (object number Museu_ProvidedCHO_museum_digital_56269__technical_number_), this is a clock by Georg Gfell, made in Germany, dated 1750. The Atlas places it in the Precision & Scientific Horology period (1750 – 1850) of its Clocks collection. The record is illustrated with 1 photograph.
Assembled from the source record's structured fields. Dates and attributions are given as the source states them; where a field is missing the Atlas leaves it blank rather than estimating.
Catalogue description
Catalogue description from German Clock Museum (German)
Im Jahre 1852 begann die Großherzoglich Badische Uhrenmacherschule in Furtwangen mit dem Aufbau einer Sammlung historischer Schwarzwalduhren. Natürlich war man bestrebt, eine Uhr aus der Frühzeit der Schwarzwälder Uhrmacherei zu finden. Doch dies erwies sich schon damals als schwieriges Vorhaben. Erst nach lange fortgesetzten Bemühungen konnte am 10. April 1860 die bis jetzt bekannte älteste Schwarzwälderuhr vorgestellt werden. Diese einfache Holzräderuhr wurde im Renchtal am Rand des Schwarzwaldes aufgefunden und stammt wohl aus der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts. Sie weist bereits die typische Bauart der später so erfolgreichen Schwarzwälder Holzuhrwerke auf: diese besitzen kein extra Gehäuse, zwei einfache Brettchen als Seitentüren genügen. Trotz intensiven Nachforschungen von Sammlern und Historikern konnte bislang keine nachweislich ältere Uhr aus dem Schwarzwald gefunden werden. (Deutsches Uhrenmuseum Furtwangen)
Shown in the original language of the source catalogue. An editor-reviewed English translation has not yet been published; we do not publish machine translations as authoritative text.
Historical context
Precision & Scientific Horology (1750 – 1850)
Harrison solves longitude; Mudge invents the lever; Breguet's Paris workshop defines the modern watch.
The age of the deadbeat escapement, compensated pendulums and observatory regulators. Domestic clocks spread through the middle classes: English longcase and bracket clocks, French gilt-bronze mantel clocks, Viennese Biedermeier wall clocks, Black Forest painted-shield clocks, and the first American shelf clocks.
Read the period in the timelineMore clocks from this periodEarlier: Early Modern Horology
Atlas type guide
Black Forest and cuckoo clocks
Clockmaking spread through the Black Forest in south-west Germany in the late seventeenth century as a winter occupation for farming families. Early clocks had wooden plates and wheels and a foliot ('Waaguhr') or short pendulum, with a painted wooden shield dial; pedlars (Uhrenträger) carried them across Europe. The cuckoo clock, which imitates the bird's call with two small bellows-driven pipes, appeared in the mid-eighteenth century.
The industry was organised around Furtwangen, Triberg, Schwenningen and Lenzkirch. The Furtwangen clockmaking school (1850) introduced the railway-house cuckoo clock design, and from the late nineteenth century factories such as Junghans, Kienzle and Hamburg-Amerikanische Uhrenfabrik produced clocks by the million. The German Clock Museum in Furtwangen preserves the region's history.
What to look for
- Wooden plates and wheels (earlier) versus brass movements (later).
- Painted shield dials (Lackschilduhr) with floral or figurative decoration.
- Cuckoo bellows and pipes, the carved 'railway house' or hunting-scene case.
- Trademarks and movement stamps of Black Forest factories.
Dating clues
- Wooden-wheeled foliot clocks: c. 1680–1750.
- Painted shield clocks: c. 1780–1880.
- Railway-house cuckoo clocks: after 1850; carved hunting-style cases after c. 1860.
General guidance written by the Atlas editors about this kind of object. It is not a statement about this particular piece; for that, rely on the source record above and on physical examination.
Read next:FoliotAnchor (recoil) escapement
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