Eyecatcher
When moving eyes are automatic watches designated whose characters move to the beat of the pendulum eyes open or close and. Such often grotesquely designed masks with moving eyes on tower clocks of the late 15th and 16th centuries can be proven for the first time. They were often designed to open their mouths when the clock struck. Well-known examples are the Schnapphans in Jena , the Platzjabbeck in Cologne or the Augenroller in Koblenz . In many places these clocks are associated with legends , but most of them are not historical. Several interpretations are discussed in research today, including the defense against disaster. Another interpretation assumes that these faces take on the old custom of respect that a watchman for every hour on the hour proclaimed the time, so you knew the watch with a face that opened his mouth at the bell. The movable eyes could then remind you that the tower keepers had to keep an eye out for fires or other threats.
This type of clock experienced a special form and entry into living rooms in clock production in the Black Forest at the end of the 19th century. These clocks were mostly frame clocks in which the eyes of the people and animals depicted were connected to the pendulum, so that the figure's eyes moved with each pendulum swing. They had movements of simple quality.
The idea was picked up again in the late 1920s. In the United States , e.g. B. Porcelain clocks in the shape of the cartoon characters produced by Walt Disney . The well-known Kit-Cat Klock , which has been around since 1932, is one of them. Comparable figure clocks are also known from southern Germany and the United Kingdom .
In the 1970s there were also wristwatches (children's watches) as eye-turning watches. It was on the dial z. B. is shown a deer with the pupils of the eyes wobbled.
Individual evidence
- ^ Alan and Rita Shenton: Price Guide to Clocks 1840-1940. Antique Collectors' Club Ltd., Suffolk (UK) 1977, ISBN 978-0902028715 .
literature
- Viktor Pröstler: Callweys manual of the clock types. From the wristwatch to the zappler , Callwey Munich 1994.