Where appropriate, the chapters include subsections on the corporate history of specific makers, such as Beha, Ketterer, Haas, Wehrle, and Hettich. This reviewer believes that most collectors buying this book will find that much of the ‘provided value’ is in these images. There are about 650 illustrations (virtually all in color) in the core section of the book. Virtually all of these images have been specifically created for this book and have never been published before. dial view, side (movement) view and/or back view, sometimes supplemented by enlargement views of unusual features. While each of these chapters has a short text describing how the complication works technically, the bulk of the chapter is devoted to color photographs showing extraordinary examples of these types of clocks, more often than not through multiple images of one specimen (e.g. Jockeles, Sorgs, miniatures and ‘Clock Peddler’ figure clocks (20 pages). The core of the book (Chapters 2 to 6, a total of 160 pages) deals with specific examples of rare and unusual specimes in five different categories of clocks: Cuckoo clocks (78 pages), clocks with automata (27 pages), musical clocks (32 pages), other rare complications, such as alarms, calendars, moon phase, precision clocks (10 pages), small clocks, incl. To learn more one would have to dig into the multiple volumes in German by Bender, Schaaf and Juetteman. It is one of the best English-language summaries on the subject. This reviewer particularly liked the first 13 page chapter on “Early Black Forest Clockmaking,” dealing with the era pre-1850. Given the author’s limited command of the German language, he has made a most commendable effort to electronically create rough translations of much to the specialized German language literature on the subject. He has obviously worked closely with the leading German institutions (such as the Deutsches Uhrenmuseum in Furtwangen), and researchers in this field (such as Willhelm Schneider), and has had access to many of the leading collections of such clocks in the US, the UK and in Germany, allowing him to create the most comprehensive documentation ever assembled on the subject. Justin Miller, an American collector and afficianado of rare and unusual Black Forest clock, has now created what unquestionably is the most thorough and comprehensive book on the subject that exists in any language. Since then, much new research has been published in German on the subject. The last major English language book dealing with that small section of the clock world was Rick Ortenburger’s ‘Black Forest Clocks,’ published in 1990. at Junghans in Schrammberg), to high-grade regulators in Lenzkirch, a few dozen miles farther south.Īs the title of this book spells out, this new publication is not about these mass appeal clocks, but only about the specialized –and therefore rare and unusual- clocks produced in the same region by smaller factories for especially discriminating buyers. In their big factories they produced everything from knock-offs of Connecticut clocks and three leged alarm clocks (e.g. ![]() The German clock manufacturing industry was very successful in copying the mass manufacturing processes for clocks using standardized parts, as invented in America. ![]() ![]() And the vast majority of those were made in the ‘Black Forest’ region in the southwestern corner of the country. Looking soleley at raw numbers, the majority of mechanical clocks imported into the USA in the course of the last 150 years were German made clocks. ![]() NAWCC members may borrow lending copy from the National Watch and Clock Library, Columbia PA. Available from the publisher for $90, plus shipping at, or directly from the author at. 304 pages, 28 x 23 cm, hardbound, printed glossy cover, dust jacket over 1000 illustrations (600+color photographs, and 300+ reproduction of historic catalog images), Six appendeces Index, Bibliographic Endnotes. Published June 2012 by Schiffer (Atglen, Pennsylvania, USA). Miller (Foreword by Roman & Maz Piekarski. Finally an Updated Detailed History of the Top End of the Black Forest Clock in English.
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