Clocks · Cuckoo / Black Forest clock
Cuckoo / black forest clock by Karl Kern (Uhrmacher), Germany, 1860
- Maker / attribution
- Karl Kern (Uhrmacher) (creator)
- Date
- 1860
- Historical period
- Industrial Revolution (1850 – 1900)
- Country of origin
- Germany
- Place
- Germany
- Object type
- Cuckoo / Black Forest clock
- Holding institution
- German Clock Museum
- Accession / object no.
- Museu_ProvidedCHO_museum_digital_56184__technical_number_
- Catalogue title (original)
- Lackschilduhr mit Kuckuck, Karl Kern, Schönwald, um 1860 (German)
Record summary
Held and catalogued by German Clock Museum (object number Museu_ProvidedCHO_museum_digital_56184__technical_number_), this is a cuckoo / black forest clock by Karl Kern (Uhrmacher), made in Germany, dated 1860. The Atlas places it in the Industrial Revolution period (1850 – 1900) 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)
Welcher Vogel versteckt sich hier? Richtig, ein Kuckuck. Was daran irritiert? Wenn wir heute von Kuckucksuhren sprechen, denken wir meist an eine Uhr in Häuschen-Form. Doch das war nicht immer so. Anfangs waren die Vögel in anderen Uhrenformen zu finden, zum Beispiel in Lackschilduhren. Diese bunten Holzuhren waren in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts der Exportschlager unter den Schwarzwalduhren. Vom Kuckuck war dabei aber nur selten die Rede. Erst als seit den 1850er Jahren Kuckucksuhren in Form von Häuschen hergestellt wurden, begann die Erfolgsgeschichte, die bis heute anhält. Die Kuckucksuhr wurde zum Inbegriff der Schwarzwalduhren. Neben dem Kuckuck gab es im Schwarzwald auch Uhren mit anderen Figuren: Mönche, Wachsoldaten oder gar Seiltänzer. (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 An editor-reviewed English translation has not yet been published; we do not publish machine translations as authoritative text.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
Industrial Revolution (1850 – 1900)
American interchangeable-parts manufacture; railroad time standards; Swiss and German factory systems.
Factory production transformed the clock into an everyday object. American makers (Seth Thomas, Ansonia, Waterbury) and German factories (Junghans, Gustav Becker, Lenzkirch) sold millions of shelf, wall and alarm clocks worldwide; France produced standardised Paris movements and carriage clocks; electric time distribution began.
Read the period in the timelineMore clocks from this periodEarlier: Precision & Scientific 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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