A Rare Black Forest Carved Trumpeter With 4 Tune Music

I recently took a trip to visit the Cuckooland museum in Cheshire, England.

Cuckooland is home to the largest collection of antique cuckoo clocks in the world! (visit them at http://www.cuckoolanduk.net/ ).

The main purpose of the trip was to research and document their collection for a new publication dedicated to Black Forest Horology that will be published shortly.

Roman and Maz Piekarski, owners and curators of the museum, graciously closed the museum to the public for a whole week to aid in this project.

This allowed us to photograph hundreds of rare clocks, movements and tools. Please keep checking back for a 15 minute walkthough video of the museum with dialog that we will share shortly!

We found this rare Black Forest trumpeter clock hiding among their 600+ clock collection of cuckoos.

Although this rare clock had been a part of the museum for 20 years, it now focuses exclusively on the cuckoo clock.

We were able to work out a deal and the museum de-acquisitioned this piece for our personal collection.

It is now a part of our private collection of Black Forest Clocks here in the USA.

The clock is 47" high and 28" across the base!

The case is fantastically carved with a wonderful romantic motif of live animals.

This example is a 3 horn "blower" style trumpeter, with a large robust music box.

The clock is unique as the trumpeter calls the 1/4's with one of four musical tunes played on the hour. We have never seen another configuration like this in all our years of collecting.

One of the four tunes played on the hour is "God Save the Queen", the tune is also recognized in the United States as "America" or "My Country 'Tis of Thee"... which was the de facto National Anthem prior to 1930.

On top of all this the Pedigree of being owned by the Cuckooland museum for over 20 years, it will stand out among many clocks in our collection.