Antique Clocks: Swinger Clocks

Video Transcript

Now, we're looking at a Swinger, Swinger Clocks. This is an Ansonia. We could have lumped it in, with our either Figural Clocks, where I talk about the Ansonia Clock Company, but these are special clocks. They're particularly valuable. They're particularly fun to watch. First, we'll talk about why they're called Swingers. The clock movement is actually housed inside the ball, here. The clock is held, by the hand of this figure, and the entire clock swings back and forth, so the motion is quite interesting and intriguing, where this is actually ticking back and forth slowly, propelled by a small pendulum, inside the head of the clock, up top. This is a particularly nice one. It's an Ansonia, although as with some of the other exotic clocks we've looked at, many of them were French. The first ones were French, but the Ansonia ones certainly command the same kinds of thousands of dollar price tags in good condition, as the French ones do. In this case, we have a bronzed finish, and we have a blue enameled ball on top, and a blue enameled ball on the bottom, as well. These finishes, unlike the French ones, are particularly fragile, so very often you'll see these kinds of clocks.They've either been refinished or they don't look that great, because the bronze finish, or the gold finish has failed, from a lot of dusting, from sitting out in dirty air too long, so condition is key with these, and if they start to look too bad, I usually recommend having some professional restore the finish, so it looks as good as it did, when it was new.

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