What's Been Going On - 2

On top of the garden project another opportunity arose. Over the last 3-4 years we have bought a few antique clocks (yes, real antiques) from a gentleman up in Loveland. He is in his 80s now and his wife is making him clean out his "man-cave" (a stand alone steel building about 30'x60'. He is a serious collector of stuff and as a fairly famous auctioneer had plenty of opportunities to acquire seriously nice stuff) so she wouldn't have to.

He contacted us and told us he was going to make us a great deal on clocks (and he has a lot). He had been putting some aside just for us. Well, a normal deal is he want's $1000 for a clock but he will give it to us for $950. Now I have managed to score a few deals from him over the years just because I have a good eye and he doesn't know as much as he thinks he does. I also know that I have over payed for a couple but they were worth it to me because they filled gaps in our collection.

So we traveled north with some serious skepticism of what the deal would be. Well it turned out to be an actual deal this time and we picked up 16 clocks including a nice grandmother clock (which is just an overall smaller version of a grandfather clock) for a seriously good price, This seriously impacted our capacity to display clocks.

The decision was made to convert a room that we had used for pottery and make it into the Clock Room. That entailed selling off the two pottery wheels (quickly done actually), cleaning the walls (clay dust) and generally prepping the room for painting. We basically did about a wall and a half at time so about three days to paint the room. Mostly because we decided to move furniture around rather than empty it. Since I was the only painter at this point it just took a little longer than it would have normally. 

With the room empty clocks were hung and evaluated for both physical and mechanical condition. One of the objectives is to have a designated room where clocks get fixed. I have taken a number of courses on the fixing of mechanical clocks but I don't really have a good place to start experimenting on taking them apart and putting them back together. We now have a room to fix clocks in and wall space for two more hanging clocks! I still need to figure out how to display the mantlepiece style clocks though, a project for the future.

I think this is the oldest clock in the group. Its labeled "Ansonia Brass & Copper Company" and dates back to a period from 1869 to 1877. This is a weight driven shelf clock and stands about 2' tall and it feels like it weighs about 30#s. 

Part of the label is damaged. But that first word is Patent and in the second line the first word is Ansonia. In December of 1877 it is re-organized as the Ansonia Clock Company.

I have no idea who made this clock at this point. I can't see any markers on the mechanism, other than a four digit code, but its a beauty. There may be something underneath though, I forgot to check.