How You Can Help!

Help to Fund the Project

When I started this project I had no idea of the cost involved, including time. I just saw a need, and had a vision of making the cuckoo clock catalogs searchable so that others could enjoy them, as I was. My goal is to always keep the basic cuckoo catalog search free so that casual clock owners can still identify their clocks. After all, the entire point of this project was to make these rare, hard to find historic catalogs available to the average user. Not a day goes by when someone isn’t posting to a Facebook group mentioning they inherited a clock and were wondering if anyone had any details about it. So I wanted people to be able to identify their clocks via a simple search interface.

The single most important thing you can do, to ensure the survival of this project, is to consider offering financial support for the technical, legal and operational costs of the project. Running this site requires a wide range of resources beyond time and effort. Financial contributions help cover web hosting, specialized software, high-resolution scanning equipment, legal assistance for copyright inquiries, and the acquisition of rare catalogs from auction sites, dealers, and private collections. Every donation—no matter the size—makes a meaningful impact on preserving the horological heritage and expanding public access to it.

This project took a lot of time, and incurred a lot of costs. There are the hosting, domain, various software licenses, etc. There have been thousands of dollars in legal fees to ensure compliance with copyright laws both in the U.S. and Europe. Each catalog I have obtained has had some cost involved. Most of the catalogs run about $20-25 a piece. Even the catalogs I was able to obtain for free through the NAWCC Library, incur a cost of roughly $20 just for shipping here and back, and the cost to purchase of scanners to image the catalogs. And this says nothing of the time spent scanning, retouching, slicing and cataloging each of the clocks.

I’ve so far invested more than 800 hours total just getting the project to it’s current state. And while it was a labor of love, I could really use the encouragement of seeing others fund this to keep it going, so that it is not a huge financial drain and the site basically covers it’s own costs.

Help in Obtaining Copy Permission

To ensure we are always in compliance with copyright protections of the clock manufacturers and catalog publishers, we need to ensure we only reproduce catalogs which have fallen into the public domain and are no longer covered by copyright protection, or catalogs which we have obtained specific permission to reproduce. Unfortunately this excludes the catalogs of clock producers from more recent time frames.

How can you help with that? If you have direct contact details for clock manufacturers’ or family members, you can point this site out to them, and help us contact them to request permission to reproduce and include their catalogs in our search system.

The following is a list of catalogs we are currently in possession of, but are likely still under copyright protection, and thus we are currently unable to utilize. Because many of these companies have since ceased business, and because hiring lawyers to trace down current ownership would be cost prohibitive, we could use your help in obtaining dates of death, or contact information for possible heirs/current owners.

  1. Henry Coehler Co., Inc. (Heco), ca 1955-63, New York, NY, USA
    Catalog is marked “Printed in Germany” and thus likely printed by/copyright whomever was manufacturing the clocks for Henry Coehler.
  2. Linden / Cuckoo Clock Mfg. Co., Inc., ca 1972, New York, NY, USA
    Catalog states “All our cuckoo clocks are assembled and fully tested in our New York factory”, but also states “Genuine Imported Hand Carved Black Forest Cuckoo Clocks”. No mention of publishing date or location.
  3. Emil Schmeckenbecher, c1973-1974, Villingen-Schwenningen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
    Catalog is for Oscar Heiss Incorporated, an importer/retailer based in New Berlin, WI, USA, but the catalog contains E. Schmeckenbecher clocks and is marked “Printed in West Germany” and thus likely printed by the manufacturer for it’s distributors, and possibly governed by German copyright law.
  4. Anton Schneider, ca 1980, Schonach, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
  5. Albert Schwab Uhrenfabrik, ca 1990, Schonach, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
  6. Bucherer, c1990, Lucerne, Switzerland

Donating Catalogs

As noted above, pretty much every catalog I have thus far obtained cost me out of pocket. If you have catalogs you can donate, it would be appreciated. Contact me through the site to get information on how you can share these with your fellow clock enthusiasts and help this project to continue to grow.

Donating Plate Scans

I also have plans of posting a plate diagram system similar to that in D. Rod Lloyd’s The Cuckoo Clock Owner’s Repair Manual, as I find that invaluable in helping identify the particular movements that people find in their clocks. You can help with this by using a flatbed scanner to scan images of the back plates for any/all clocks which you disassemble. If you have plate scans to donate, contact me through the site.