Cuckoo Clocks

All cuckoo clocks from clockshop.com.au are authentic cuckoo clocks made in Germany. These beautiful and unique hand carved clocks date back to the early 18th century and are still manufactured in the Black Forest region of Germany.

Making a cuckoo clock takes a lot of skill and experience. The carving and hand craft in every cuckoo clock makes them unique and uncomprimising quality and tradition means each manufacturer has standards that must be met to achieve the VdS certificate of authenticity. Click to read more about the Association of the Black Forest Clock (Verein – die Schwarzwalduhr: VdS) 

Black Forest mechanical cuckoo clocks are weight driven and come with two different movements:

1 Day Movement - you wind the clock by pulling the chain and winding the weights once every day 

8 Day Movement - you wind the clock by pulling the chain and winding the weights once every week.

Each clock will have either two or three weights; two weights for cuckoo only and three weights for cuckoo and music. One weight runs the clock movement and hands that show the time, one weight drives the cuckoo calling mechanism and the third weight is for the mechanical music movement.

The cuckoo sound is produced using bellows that push air through two whistles creating the 'cook' and 'coo' sounds respectively. If you choose to also have music, the third weight drives a traditional mechanical music box movement with a pinned cylinder that plucks notes on a 'comb' to produce the melody.

Mechanical cuckoo clocks can be silenced with a manual on/off lever, with some models also featuring automatic night off. This means you can turn the cuckoo and music off completely, or in the case of automatic night off, it switches off from 8:00pm to 8:00am.

Quartz cuckoo clocks operate differently to mechanical cuckoo clocks. Quartz means it is battery operated and has a recording of a real cuckoo bird in a forest environment. Unlike mechanical cuckoo clocks, these never need to be wound and have ornamental or decorative weights and chains. Quartz cuckoo clocks are also available with music; the models with music playing 12 different tunes alternating each hour. All quartz cuckoo clocks feature a light sensor for automatic night shut off (the cuckoo and music does not play when it is dark).

Automata are self operating or controlled mechanisms designed to automatically follow a predetermined sequence of operations: the cuckoo sound and the bird that appears when the door opens is one example of an automaton. Cuckoo clocks frequently have other automata (moving parts and figurines) which move when the cuckoo calls or the music plays. Some of the common automata are wood choppers, beer drinkers, kissing couples and water wheels. This automata is featured on both mechanical and quartz cuckoo clocks.