Manufactum cuckoo clock

At the end of the 17th century, clock production in the Black Forest developed from the winter sideline of a few farmers and eventually became the precision engineering center of Germany. The (unjustly) often mocked cuckoo clock was also refined into a quality clock there. The basic shape of its case, which is still common today, goes back to a design competition held in 1850 by Robert Gerwig - head of the Grand Ducal Baden Clockmaking School in Furtwangen and master builder of the Gotthard and Black Forest railroads. The winner was the Karlsruhe architect and professor of design theory Friedrich Eisenlohr. He had given the housing the shape of the railroad keeper's cottages he had designed along the Black Forest Railway - which makes sense as it was precisely this Black Forest Railway that opened up the often remote valleys and contributed significantly to the development of precision mechanics in the Black Forest by providing access to the raw material metal. Over the course of time, however, many cuckoo clocks have had to endure all sorts of design nonsense borrowed from the local flora and fauna, in contrast to their originally rather austere form.

We have turned back the cuckoo clock. Our version - a custom-made clock from the Black Forest clock manufacturer Rombach & Haas, founded in 1894 - goes even further than the original design in terms of formal clarity. The black lacquered iron weights in the shape of cones are the only classic decorative element. The mechanical movement comes from a precision engineering company in Triberg, which has been manufacturing clock parts and movements since 1856. It is an 8-day movement, which is more complex and expensive to manufacture than a 1-day movement, which is why it is only used in a few cuckoo clocks.

In addition to a gong, the striking mechanism activates bellows on two pipes with a time delay, which produces the characteristic "cuckoo call" that has sounded on most cuckoo clocks in the interval of the major third since the 19th century and identifies the clock as a musical automaton. The bowing of the hand-carved bird during the call is also controlled by one of the bellows with its up and down movement.