Part 5 has 95 messages...time to start up a new one.
You can read the previous thread 'Still more about Nelson clocks 5' in the link below.
Here's the 557 in Red (which I bought) and the 557 in blue which I might be bidding on.
I was talking with a frien...
I was talking with a friend in NYC last week who has a wonderful collection of all Howard miller clocks similiar to the ones that are listed above at the treadway auction, and he was telling me the next big wave of Howard miller clocks to go up in Price is the 70's Umanoff wood clocks,
He said Umanhoff designed about 25 wood clocks for Miller, starting in the late 60's to the the early 70's The sales were somewhat slow cause the clocks weighted a ton and for a wall clock that was not good, they were the first generation of quartz movements also,
The faces were great, and some of the Nelson hands showed up on his clocks, but mostly his signature orange hands,
I told him I had bought 2 at the Palm Springs show for around 150.00 each and he said that is such a cheap price as his clocks are the last of original clocks from that era, designed by famous designers that Howard miller had contracted with ( makes good sense as every thing else after the 70s from Howard miller was pure crap, big grand daddy clocks)
So next time you see a heavy wood clock weighing 15 lbs maybe you should nab it cause it might become valuable real soon.
I suspected that the
Umanoff clocks were going to be the next hot thing. They're so organic and funky.
But, this was the start of Howard Miller beginning to cut some corners.
On these heavy, substantial clocks, the clockfaces are pretty cheap.
I would love to see Arthur Umanoff get his due...his Raymor furniture is beautiful and right in the same style as his heavy wood Howard Miller clocks are.
yes those paper face are ...
yes those paper face are rather cheap but they are great classic modern 70's funky designs,
Did Umanhoff design any/ all of the meridian clocks? and of course George Nelson got all the credit for them.
I know Umanoff had contracts with Raymore and I assume that is the same company that made his furniture as the clocks,
By the way
this is funny; some guy is selling a Umanoff teacart (sold by Raymor) as a Paul McCobb teacart!
What a scream....
http://cgi.ebay.com/Paul-McCobb-Serving-Cart_W0QQitemZ110247110009QQihZ0...
Speaking of cheek
there's a guy selling this rare clock on eBay with an bloody opening bid of $1,000.00!
Yes, it's a rare clock, but the piece on eBay is missing the second hand and it wasn't even tested to see if it works!
This is a snap of the clock with the second hand
(What's hard to see is that this hubcap clock is at least 17" width and is convex...flat on the wall and the center is between 7 and 9" off the wall (a friend used to have this clock and i'm doing the dimensions from memory). The hands are the unsual-for-Nelson slender hands and they're bent to the contour of the curve of the clock.
Got that red wind-up
clock and unfortunately, it's gonna need some work.
First, the case got separated a bit, but I was able to glue it back so it looks fine.
Second, the aluminum clockface is held to the wood by old yellowed double stick tape with foam in the middle. It was completely separated. I had to clean off the old double stick tape and use new tape...it's fine now (but it WAS cheaply made).
Third, after winding, the pendulum doesn't tick, tick, tick for very long.
I'm going to have to take it to my clock repair to figure out what's wrong with the motor.
Bummer...but live and learn. Even though it was an $80.00 clock back then, it wasn't a quality made product,.
I got that black and mirror clock (above)
today and it's absolutely terrific. It's well made and all I did was take the white hands off, sprayed them with new white paint to clean them up, straighten ouyt the second hand and dumped a C battery in it and threw it up on the wall.
Totally happy with this later Umanoff clock
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