The cuckoo clock is back

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See our Great Collection of Antique Grandfather Clocks.


The cuckoo clock is back . Don’t tell me that you knew that the first cuckoo clocks were made in the Black Forest in the mid-18th century. And don’t turn your noses up, either. When did you last see a cuckoo clock? All right then, so your gran has one of those poo-coloured chalets from which a featherless, startled-looking bird emerges on the hour, wide of mouth and eye, garbling a whoop. But then, it can’t be easy having a stick up your bottom.

It was, of course, only a matter of time before gran detritus became cool, but who’d have thought it would be the CC? Cuckoo clocks are back, but not as we knew them (though I’m tempted to bid on a vintage Schmeckenbecher model on eBay). These are chic, pared-down cuckoos with tidy habits, John Pawson-like housing, quartz light detectors (to keep the cuckooing down to a dull roar at night) and smart colours.

To understand the rebirth of the cuckoo clock, we must analyse the evolution of the clock over the past 20 years. One word comes to mind: boring. Consider the large Eighties farmhouse pine clock (to match the scrubbed pine table), the faux French station clock – very early Nineties – to complement the faux French country furniture, and the mid-Nineties, greedy bastard banker trio of clocks – if it’s 5pm in London, it’s midday in New York, an ungodly hour in Tokyo and I’ve got a big enough kitchen wall to hang three clocks. The apogee of the bad clock movement, though, is the recent, smug minimalist projection clock, which beams the time onto the wall. This is pretty damned clever until an unsuspecting guest stands in front of the projection and the light shows up his or her dandruff. If you own any or all of the aforementioned clocks, then for goodness’ sake, take them down immediately.

The new cuckoo is irony embodied. Why? Because nobody needs a clock any more with all the other timekeeping devices that we have about our person – the phone, computer and BlackBerry. The cuckoo clock is both the new tongue-in-cheek work of art and the new fashion statement. “The cuckoo clock represents a popular movement in design, the modernising of an old classic,” says Miranda Harrison, group buyer for Conran stores. Harrison’s bestseller is a silver cuckoo (£210). “Buyers like the sense of individuality a cuckoo clock represents; there’s a hint of humour and a lot of style about it,” she says. “And have you noticed that so many clocks are just plain boring?”

The cuckoo clock is now so hip that BMW has created a version for the Mini dashboard. On the hour, a small red Mini emerges and circles the clock, complete with vrooming and beeping noises. Technically speaking, this makes it a car clock rather than a cuckoo clock, but I think we all know where BMW is coming from...

See our Great Collection of Antique Grandfather Clocks.