Recently a friend of ours has been in hospital after a heart scare, so we've been to visit a couple of times. One of the random things we found in the hospital was a large late 19th century clock, plonked in the middle of the corridor at the top of the stairs in the medical ward.
It is listed as an historic object and was made by the workshop of Louis Delphin Odobey and restored a few years ago by Gilles Vassort.
The Odobey family tower clock making business was set up in the Jura in the 1860s and run by three successive generations for a hundred years. They were unusual in that they made from scratch all the components of their clocks, using custom made machines powered by water. It is one of the reasons they never diversified, and finally closed when the fashion for tower clocks in buildings dwindled. Other clock making businesses, especially those making grandfather clocks (Fr. comtoises) used an army of peasants working in a cottage industry to produce parts for clocks which were then centrally assembled. At their peak, Odobey were making 100 tower clocks a year, and employed 80 people.
1 comment:
How marvellous to find such a fascinating object in a hospital corridor. It somehow makes the place more human and less scary.
If it has any value I doubt it would have lasted long in our local UK hospital.
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