Wall clocks represent the largest selection of antique wall clocks and are among the earliest forms of clocks designed for the home. Throughout the years, walls clocks are produced in a huge range of designs, from Rococo to Biedermeier, Arts plus Crafts to Art Deco, cuckoo to Coca-Cola.
Some of the first wall clocks were the cartel clocks of eighteenth-century France. Housed in elaborate solid-bronze or gold-leaf-on-wood frames (cartel is French for frame), the wall clocks mostly featured Roman numerals on white dials surrounded by gilt garlands, figurines, plus cherubs.
The cuckoo clocks made in Germany’s Black Forest are another venerable wall-clock form, significantly the house-shape ones created in the nineteenth century and attributed to Friedrich Eisenlohr.
Image clocks from the identical century, mostly from Austria, inserted clocks into paintings. In many cases, the paintings would depict village scenes—the hands of the main clock would be strategically placed on the painting so which they were positioned on the exterior of, say, a church steeple. Vienna was also a center for regulator wall clocks, that were among the a good amount of accurate clocks of their time.
Wall clocks in nineteenth-century America evolved from the forms, as well as from English wag-on-the-wall clocks, whose weights plus pendulums dangled plus swung for each one to see below the clock’s case. The a good amount of famous plus sought-after antique American wall clock is Simon Willard’s banjo clock, that was therefore named for its resemblance to an upside-down banjo.
In the first part of the century, every American clockmaker worth his salt created a banjo clock. They were typically cased in mahogany plus regularly had brass ornamentation on their sides to show frets on a banjo’s neck. A few were crowned with eagles, others were anchored by boxes that were decorated with paintings of everything from harbor scenes to grand estates. Still different variations replaced the banjo shape with that of a lyre.
The gallery clock was another popular type of American wall clock. Not like the banjos, which had long cases to hide the clock’s pendulum, they were almost mostly dial, with hardly any casing beneath the clock’s face at all. Gallery clocks quickly became a favourite of churches, courthouses, plus other public buildings.
Schools got their own style, the so-called schoolhouse clock, 1st appearing somewhere between 1850 plus 1860. Like a gallery clock but with added framing—typically wood—round the dial, schoolhouse clocks had short cases below their faces, mostly with a tiny pane of glass to reveal the pendulum inside.
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