Antique Clocks: Revival of Grandfather Clocks

Video Transcript

"We looked at and talked earlier about long case clocks by the Willards, and English examples, but, they...in the mid eighteen-thirty...eighteen hundreds, they really became old-fashioned. They were symbols of the old style of living. People wanted to be modern with more of those shelf clocks and mantle clocks and wall clocks that we've been looking at. But in eighteen-seventy-five, a very popular song came out about "my grandfather's clock", and some of you may even still know the words to that. But it began, along with colonial revival architecture and design, a resurgence of interest in grandfather clocks. But these weren't the grandfather clocks of earlier times. Many of these were big, monumental cases like this, designed for rich people, and their big foyers and their mansions. So, although you could buy a smaller, more traditional grandfather clock as well, many of these monsters were made. This is a....by the Waltham clock company. Another particularly important feature of these is many of them had these chrome or nickel-plated chime tubes. So these would play Westminster chime, Woodington chimes, you would see them lined up along the back of the case. I'm sorry in this case we're missing the dial of this one. It's off being re-silvered. But these would play those tunes, as long as they didn't get cracked or fractured in some way. But when they do their...their chiming, they do it...they do it in an impressive way."