Cuckooland

Story

The Cuckooland Museum, previously known as the Cuckoo Clock Museum, is a museum that exhibits mainly cuckoo clocks, located in Tabley, Cheshire, England. The collection comprises 300 years of cuckoo clock-making history, since the very earliest examples made in the 18th to the 21st century.Establishment and foundational reasonsThe museum was set up in 1990 by brothers Roman and Maz Piekarski after bringing together a collection of antique Black Forest cuckoo clocks that has been continuously increased ever since. Both men were trained as clockmakers in Manchester from the age of 15, which is when their fascination with these timepieces began.It became apparent to them that an important part of European clock-making history was liable to disappear if surviving examples fell into irretrievable disrepair. Their guiding principles have always been to purchase objects only of the highest museum quality and which held an important significance in the historical development of cuckoo timekeeping.In Roman Piekarski's own words: When we started collecting in the 1970s no one wanted them because battery and electric clocks were all the rage. We picked many up for next to nothing.The collectionIn the past, the exhibition also included other kind of timepieces such as longcase, wall and bracket clocks but now focuses on c. clocks especially.The museum also hosts a range of Black Forest cuckoo and quail clocks, trumpeter clocks, monks playing bells and other associated musical movements.Cuckooland has nowadays more than 700 cuckoo clocks on display of different styles, sizes, manufacturers and ages and it is regarded as the most important of its kind in the whole world. Many of the timekeepers are very rare and the collection contains the best examples of the cuckoo clockmaker’s art: