EUGENE, Ore. — Tick. Tock. Times 2,000.
That’s the sound you hear upon entering The Clockmaker’s Gallery — the sound of about 2,000 clocks ticking and tocking, binging and bonging.
It’s enough to make you cuckoo.
Unless you’re a “clockaholic,” like the folks who work in the west Eugene shop. Clockmakers there are kept very busy maintaining and at times rescuing analog clocks — what many consider to be a rare art form surviving in a digital age.
“It’s definitely an anachronism,” says Chuck Christensen, owner of the business along with his wife, Barbara, that he began 31 years ago. “But it’s also romantic. I would say 80 percent of the industry is based on sentimentality. That’s rewarding.”
While Christensen is a certified clockmaker, the young man he took on a dozen years ago, Wesley Niemczak, is a certified master clockmaker, a classification bestowed by According to the Ohio-based American Watchmakers-Clockmakers Institute.
Fixing clocks probably began eight centuries ago in Europe, when it’s believed the first mechanical clocks were made. It was time to move on from sundials, hourglasses and water clocks.
Mechanical clocks, such as grandfather and cuckoo clocks, are weight-driven. They’re powered by the gravitational pull of slowly falling weights that hang on cables or chains, and regulated by pendulums. They have components such as gears, levers, hammers, rods and springs.
Their intricate inner workings require attention to detail. That’s where the clockmaker comes in. Most clockmakers today do not actually make clocks, although a master clockmaker must demonstrate that sort of knowledge and skill. Rather, they repair and rebuild the movements — the inner workings of existing clocks.
“From the age of 5, when I could read and write, I … started working on clocks,” says the 30-year-old Niemczak, who grew up in Corvallis and began his apprenticeship with Christensen right out of high school.
His father, Walter Niemczak, is a certified clockmaker and master watchmaker who is now retired but once owned his own shop in Corvallis called Time Specialties, Wesley Niemczak says. His father and Christensen have known each other for years.
Christensen opened his business in 1976. It was all of about 500 square feet then. He came to Eugene in 1970 from California to study at the University of Oregon. He was working on his doctorate in philosophy, with the goal of becoming a professor, when he wandered into a clock shop on River Road owned by Clinton Chezem. He bought an old clock, had a problem with it and took it back. He and Chezem began to tinker on it together.
“Hey, you’re pretty good,” Christensen remembers Chezem saying. He asked the doctoral student if he had time to help out in the shop. Christensen ended up working part time for Chezem.
“My love for it increased more than my appreciation for teaching philosophy,” says Christensen, who flew to Madison, Wis., to check out a job teaching logic at the University of Wisconsin. He passed.
“I got off the plane and it was 40 below,” he remembers.
Instead, he began an apprenticeship with Chezem and then opened his own shop with 12 clocks and $500. His friends, not to mention his first wife, thought he was, uh, cuckoo. In fact, he came home one day and his wife had left a note saying to go ahead and open his clock shop, but she was leaving him.
He would later marry Barbara, who had her own gig cutting hair.
Having a doctorate in philosophy, her husband is always thinking, Barbara Christensen says. “I always kid him — ‘something’s ticking,’ ” she says, pointing to her head.
The Christensens travel the world in search of rare clocks and their shop is filled with them. The oldest is a 1665 water clock from Chester, England, that Chuck Christensen found in Princeton, N.J. It is functional and a treat to look at, but it’s not for sale.
There’s a Swiss “atmos” clock for $2,595. It’s an unusual clock “that lives on air” says the sign next to it.
As its name suggests, the clock runs on the atmosphere. Fluctuations in temperature move a capsule sealed with gas and liquid inside the clock, which keeps the mindspring humming.
There’s an 1888 clock from Paris called “Angelique Gardien.” It sells for $2,685 and has an ornate golden angel with wings next to the timepiece. There are grandfather clocks everywhere, and plenty of cuckoo clocks, too, including an “Original Rombo” — made by Black Forest Cuckoo Clocks in Germany — that goes for $849.
The Christensens say they are not in this for the money. Chuck Christensen tells anyone showing an interest in getting into this rare throwback of a business to do it for love.
“You’ve got to love clocks and the craft,” he says. “If you love the money, this is the wrong profession.”
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