20 December 2017 / leggypeggy

Peacock Clock is a true show-stopper

birds, clocks, gold, museums, owl, peacock, sculptures, St Petersburg

Peacock Clock with tail fully opened. Photo from museum video

Male peacocks are one of the world’s showiest birds. They love to show their colours, strut their stuff and display their magnificent tails.

And just when we thought we’d seen the flashiest and showiest of all peacocks in Australia and India, we toured the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia, and encountered the Peacock Clock.

This magnificent bird takes clockwork, sculpture, gold work and innovation to a whole new level. Just after 1pm on the day we visited, I followed the museum’s map to find the larger-than-life bird sitting majestically in its glass case.

As the photos show, I examined this automaton from every angle and read all the information about it.

Here’s some of what I learned.

The main attraction—the peacock

A bit about the clock’s history
Although unsigned, the clock is believed to be the work of James Cox, English clock maker, mechanic, jeweller and the most celebrated manufacturer of curiosities of this sort. Recent research confirms this as being his work.

The clock originally belonged to Prince Potemkin, who bought it disassembled. In 1791, he asked a gifted Russian mechanic, Ivan Kulibin, to assemble it and put it in motion. The mechanic took a year to get around to the job (obviously you couldn’t get reliable help back then either). By then, Potemkin had died, and Empress Catherine II bought the clock. In turn, the mechanism passed to her son and successor, Emperor Paul I.

The clock had a major restoration in 1995.

The peacock in its cage

The challenge to restore
Back in 1995, this poor bird might as well have been on the chopping block for a holiday meal. The entire clock was filthy, rollers and gears were worn out, organ pipes couldn’t produce a sound, chains were torn, the pendulum suspension was broken, and many parts had been wrongly assembled on previous restorations.

Once they figured out the clock’s construction was based on modules, the restorers were able to focus on the independent parts. But the clock still presented a challenge, with many of the fixes requiring novel and unusual approaches.

Today the clock’s mechanism is regularly attended to and, if I read the slightly disjointed English right, it is wound weekly.

The control mushroom is in the middle of the pic. Look closely and you can just see the dragonfly

What the clock does
The movement of the clock is hidden inside the large mushroom in the centre of the setting. The mushroom has two dials—one shows the hour in Roman numerals and the other shows the minutes in Arabic numerals.

A dragonfly on top of the mushroom plays the part of the second hand. A carillon (a train of bells) chimes the hours and the quarters. Three coiled spring movements control the owl, the peacock and the cock.

The owl moves first, twitching its eyes and raising a wing (the English translation says it raises a ‘paw’). The bells on the cage around it tinkle. Then the peacock raises its head regally and opens its tail for a moment. Then the cock crows several times.

Cock on the Peacock Clock

What I saw
Cripes, I wish I could say I saw the clock perform its whole routine. I was there around 1pm and saw nothing. I figured I’d missed it, so I went back about 1:50pm and waited patiently. I even managed to get a great close-up position and some good close-up photos.

But 2pm came and went with nothing. Darn. I found a guide and used hand signals and raised eyebrows to ask about the clock. Her return hand signals (tapping the number 7 on my watch and holding up one finger) told me that the clock would perform once at 7pm (the museum was open until 9). I’m pretty sure she didn’t mean 2:35 or 1:07!

But I did see a video of what happens when the clock does its magic. It’s a looping video and I watched it several times. Completely magical and magnificent. One of the pics here is a still I took from the video. Maybe someday I’ll see the clock perform in real-time. Maybe someday you’ll see it too.

Stay tuned for a full post on this amazing museum.