The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1885-01-10
Time Keeping Novelties.

uredm IL ID. ff ltal 4ntts TEl
81 Time. Keeping Novelties. 30
In the days Of "Grandfather's Clock,
there was little business in time keep
ers, but forty or fifty years ago New
England manufacturers pushed In on
the domain of the wooden and heavy
old-fashioned clocks with wares that
were carried everywhere, North, West,
and South, as sewing machines were
pushed into prominence at later date.
The clock peddler went everywhere,
and he left in nearly every farmhouse
Notwithstanding clock. .esins5
Because these new time pieces were
very much cheaper than the old, with
this innovation there was new impet-
us given the making of clocks, and it
presently enlarged from merely use
full into fanciful industry. As fashion
turned to small clocks, taste began
their embellishments, aud from an econ
omy. they were forced into a luxury,
into artistic designs of costly structure,
and it was not only the proper thing to
have a clock, but quite desirable that
the clock should be one of the expen-
sive ornaments of the house. This
naturally opened the way into new
field of enterprise, and the designing
OF fantastic and unique models for
clocks became a profitable employment.
1t is the ambition of the clock-buyer of
day to get one especially notable for
its unlqueness and accuracy of move
ment has really come to be . matter of
secondary Importance after the beauty
or oddity of the workmanship. Stylish
clocks are therefore very expensive
concerns now, and are eagerly bought
in spite of the fact that that equally
good, if not better, timekeepers can be
obtained for a comparative trifle.
But while we have been gradually eff
fecting q revolution in the character of
clocks, France seems to have been
equally Jealous in concentrating the
destiny of noisy records through a plan
to do away with clocks entirely by re-
turning to the dial on an improved ba-
sis. The first important step in that
direction was the removal from the
Grand Hotel at Paris of seven hundred
chimney clocks and the substitution of
dials. the hands of which will be silent
~ directed by the municipal regulator.
In France, no less than il, the United
States, there has been q progressive
movement of clocks wholly under the
guidance of fashion. The advance !.
from wooden to brass works began the
artistic transition here, which in France
the dynasty determined the style of the
'time-piece- A nation that so often
shifted its form or personnel of govern
ment naturally kept the clockmakers
busy, and the figures surrounding the
bronze clocks were intended to CON-
memorate some incident or event of the
reigning government, so that it is pos
sible to read the history of France in
the varying patterns of her clocks year
by year. AS Greek and Roman subjects
were popular during the First Empire,
though images of Napoleon were COM
monest, with an occasional remem-
brance of Josephine, there were corr
characteristics of the roy
alist epochs, and if the superior nobility
to be too hideously ugly to
figure well as clock ornaments, an ideal
subject of the time was chosen, the DO
cts, the artists, the players being drawn
from with becoming Difference to their
attractive qualities. 10 .sn
The first clock ever used in France
was sent to Charlemagne by Haroun-
Before that the sun was
the time-keeper by day, carefully grad
nated candles the servants by night |
Now one can not cast q glance without
clock in, Paris, and yet
i is singular fact that they are noisy
affairs, upon which no one fully relies as
correct records of time. Frenchmen
ire therefore never punctual-G ambef-
a became famous for being an excep-
ion to the rule. The clocks of France
ire as snowy and superficial as her |
people. and of the . 700 pendules de |
,heminee in the Grand Hotel all made |
! regularly distracting tick-tick, but |
hardly two were at the trouble to tell /
he same story of the hour. Hence the
'alue of the dials. Designing subjects
or clocks has for years been q leading
of the highest sculptural
alent of France, and we have ample
violence Of the high art in the clocks |
4 this country. 1t Is not to be ex-
'ected, then, that the ornamental will
urrender to the merely useful, and
here Is no prospect that the mechan-
cally governed dial will to any extent
upersede the clocks of the, artists. The
arlor, the drawing room, and the
alon have nothing moro exquisite
han the elaborate clocks that repre-
emit in their cost price goodly foun-
alton of fortune, and if they chance
} be time-keepers as well as clocks,
ley have all the seduction of coquetry.
Il
An English firm has begun the
manufacture of casks and barrels of
teel They are lighter than wood and