page_title: Cuckoo clock
section_title: "Chalet" style, the Swiss contribution
hierarchical_section_title: Cuckoo clock / History / "Chalet" style, the Swiss contribution
caption_attribution_description: English: Swiss cuckoo clock in the shape of a Brienz chalet. Brienz (Switzerland, ca. 1900). Carved and painted wood. The movement with anchor escapement and cuckoo. Music box with eight melodies in the base. Dimensions: 52x32x54 cm.
context_page_description: A cuckoo clock is typically a pendulum-regulated clock that strikes the hours with a sound like a common cuckoo's call and has an automated cuckoo bird that moves with each note. Some move their wings and open and close their beaks while leaning forwards, whereas others have only the bird's body leaning forward. The mechanism to produce the cuckoo call has been in use since the middle of the 18th century and has remained almost without variation.
  It is unknown who invented the cuckoo clock and where the first one was made. It is thought that much of its development and evolution was made in the Black Forest area in southwestern Germany, the region where the cuckoo clock was popularized. These clocks were exported to the rest of the world from the mid-1850s on. Today, the cuckoo clock is one of the favourite souvenirs of travelers in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. It has become a cultural icon of Germany.
context_section_description: The "Chalet" style is an invention from 1920 by Zurich Company Lötscher in Switzerland, at that time they were highly valued as souvenirs. However, "what could come as a surprise however is learning that Switzerland is not in fact the home of the cuckoo clock and that the quartz clocks are made in Germany as well. The Black Forest region of southern Germany is where cuckoo clocks - mostly depicting a hunting scene - have their real nest."
  In the English-speaking world, cuckoo clocks are sufficiently identified with Switzerland that the film The Third Man has an oft-quoted speech (and it even had antecedents) in which the villainous Harry Lime mockingly says that "in Switzerland they had brotherly love. They had 500 years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." A typically wrongly attributed meme by a Hollywood movie.
  Though, music and jewellery boxes of several sizes as well as timepieces were manufactured in the shape of a typical Swiss chalet, some of those clocks had also the added feature of a cuckoo bird and other automata.
caption: Swiss mantel cuckoo clock with case in the shape of a Brienz chalet. It is fitted with a music box with 8 melodies, ca. 1900.
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