The first cuckoo clock dates back to around 1730. It was a product
of the almost 100 years of clock making in the Black Forest of Germany
that started sometime in the mid 17th century. Though there are many
stories of who built the first clock, Franz Anton Ketterer has been given the credit.
The first cuckoo clocks were primitive compared to those made later. Their movements
were made with wooden plates and gears. Many of the clocks had square faces painted
with water color paints. As time went on, the clocks became more and more sophisticated
in their designs and decorations. The birds' wings and beaks were animated and some
decorated with feathers. The many themes decorating the clocks were only limited to
the imagination of the painters of the faces for the clocks. They included scenes of
family, hunting, military motifs and more. Some were even decorated with porcelain
columns and enameled dials.
Some of the famous early cuckoo clock makers in the Black Forest were Theodore Ketterer,
Johann Baptist Beha and Fidel Hepting.
By the late 1800s the cuckoo industry was some what industrialized. As well as factories where
the clocks where made and assembled, Families would live and work together in large cottages,
each individual working on the part of the clock they specialized in. Some carved the decorations,
others assembling the movement and still others fitting movements in the cases. There were an
estimated 13,500 men and women engaged in the clock making industry in the villages in and around
Triberg.
THE CUCKOO BIRD
The Cuckoo can be found in Africa, Asia and Northern Europe. They are slim bodied and are about 13 inches in length.
They have a blue-grey head, breast and upper parts, and horizontal barring on the under parts.
However, the female also exists as a rare rufous (reddish) morph, so instead of being grey it is red-brown.
They never build a nest, preferring instead to lay their eggs in the nests of other birds who unwittingly
raise the cuckoo fledglings as their own.
