Art Deco Clockwork

Art Deco clocks are special to me. As I write this, my mom has just passed “out of human time” and into the next realm at the age of 96. She was a great collector of clocks, especially those that reminded her of the city in which we were born: Chicago –  acknowledged cradle of “Prairie Style” in the 1910-1920s, the Midwest version of Art Deco. 

The best days of Art Deco clocks were 1910-1920s, when hardly anyone could afford them. For an example of a cheaper, middle-market clock of this era, BB sent me a shot of a Ceramic Clock Company item which has all the hallmarks of the Art Deco style, reimagined for middle class buyers in the 1930s. The top designs of the Art Deco Period clock were produced by notable companies in the 1920s. Those buyers of high fashion who couldn’t afford European designer clocks opted for the “look” of reproduced “lower brow” Art Deco such as we see on this clock as the style morphed in the 1930s.

Why are Art Deco clocks important to me? When I turned 13, my mother took me to Marshall Field’s to buy ANY book I wanted. I remember the Louis Sullivan clock hanging over the front of the stately store. To commemorate my birthday, a relative bought me a miniature table replica of that clock, which had a metal (pewter) repoussé front and a flat back, a reproduction for a 1970s desktop produced by Lenox. The “look” was sleek, made of metallic finishes; sophisticated, but cheap. 

The clock BB sends me is the re-do of that style, which is Low-Brow Horology: the Art Deco clock for anyone’s mantel piece in the 1930s. The face of the clock is not sterling, as some of the best clocks of the era would have been, and not in that elegant style, but this clock is undeniably kinda kitschy. Note the OTHER photo I show you here is an example of an Art Deco clock that IS kitsch – that mermaid clock, where you see her dumping the sands of time into the ocean. 

The finest of art deco clocks were designed by three of the most influential designers of the Art Deco period: Romanian Art Deco Sculptor Demétre Chiparus (1886-1947) who designed sculpture for art deco clocks; exotic dancers, elegant women with Borzoi dogs, mermaids; these were not affordable and could only be purchased by the wealthy. However, you can see where the mermaid figure comes from in that photo– if you can’t afford a Chiparus figural clock, you CAN afford a silver-plated Mermaid Clock – that is electrified.

This is a great example of the ‘trickle down’ of a style, which must become affordable in order to “trickle down.” 

Many great and expensive Art Deco clocks feature figures: panthers, dogs, fauns, mermaids, dancers. Great “animaliers” (sculptors who created well-wrought animals in France) such as Michel Decoux (1837-1924) created clocks topped with elegant sleek animals in bronze, sterling, or marble. These clocks, in design about 10 years later, ‘trickled down’ to the middle class and such American companies such as Ansonia created figural clocks in silver-plating-faced fronts, and a cheaper, sometimes brass-plated dial, with figures that are not exactly artistic.

Finally, another designer of great clocks from the early 20^th century was Josef Lorenzl, famous for sexy females perched atop a mantel clock, designed in marble; the figure was crafted of bronze. In the history of Art Deco sculpture, nothing is more notable than the figures designed for mantel clocks, and companies in Europe such as Japy Frères, Samuel Marti, and the Junghans Company made Art Deco mantel clocks that only the wealthy could afford. A reversal of the trend towards luxury occurred when the German Bauhaus school designed their clocks, which attempted to bridge the gap between fine and applied arts. This is that niche in Art Deco design that became geometric, elegant in a linear way. The Bauhaus Art Deco clock leaned heavily on the new aesthetic paradigm called Industrial Design.

You can see that BB’s clock STRIVED to be elegant and streamlined, imitating those made of the highest and most valuable luxurious materials, but there is nothing streamlined and elegant about this clock. 

The value of the clock is marginal, but what it represents is powerful. Every high style “trickles down” to a lower-brow style, and this clock is a great example of that in the early 20^th century. Price? $150.