CLOCKS OF RARE BEAUTY

Waipa Post, Volume 36, Issue 2149, 26 April 1928, Page 7

CLOCKS OF RARE BEAUTY

Popular tradition says the American farmer is handy with a jackknife, and this is exemplified in a remarkable American history clock, nine feet high and with 58 carved panels depicting scenes in the nation's history, which two brothers of Bohemian descent have fashioned with a knife and a chisel. Rather than spend their evenings idly whittling, F. L. and Josieph Bily, farmers of Conover, put their artistic talents to work, and their several extraordinary clocks are attracting attention (says the Christian Science Monitor).

The brothers, men nearing middle age, have lived all their lives on the home farm between Conover and Spillville. They have had only a common school education, have never travelled, or had contact with cultural influences, except that gained through reading at home and study. Yet, in their farm shop, in spare hours, with only a penknife and a chisel, they have carved from beautiful woods, some of them imported from Italy, clocks of cathedral size, which those learned in the wood-carver's craft prociaim to be real art.

The artisans have the most modest opinion of their work. They have never offered any of their clocks for sale, or have they any wish to sell them. They have made them simply because they have had the true artists' urge to construct artistic things. It is only recently others than neighbours have seen their clocks. Last summer their story became known, and hundreds of motor touring parties visited the farm, there to marvel and go away and urge others to put the home of " the clock-makers of Conover " on their list of places of rarest interest to visit.

The American history clock, largest and finest of the seven great clocks the Bilys have carved, is the product of four years' labour. The scenes in the many small panels of front and sides include Columbus' landing in America, De Soto and the setting sun on the Mississippi, Marquette and Joliet's discovery of the Mississippi, Captain John Smith and Pocahontas, the landing of the Pilgrims, Indians on a buffalo hunt, Indian praying to the rising sun, Indian camp, Indian village, Indian women making baskets, pioneer ploughing, pioneer mothers spinning, Charter Oak, Indian wardance, Battle of Tippecanoe, Sasacajea leading Lewis and Clark expedition, Sitting Bull, cowboys, first locomotive, Betsy Ross making the flag, Saout Jack Crawford and Lincoln splitting rails. Some of the scenes are original compositions, others are copied from famous paintings and sculptures. The Liberty Bell is above the clock, and round the base is an American forest scene. In front of the pendulum is Father Time with his scythe. When the hour strikes a door opens and four figures Childhood, Youth, Maturity, and Old Age—appear.

Another of the clocks is a reproduction of a Gothic cathedral of the Middle Ages. It has six ohimes. Every half hour the 12 apostles come out and pass in review across the front of the clock as the chimes are playing. A clock of twelfth-century Gothic is patterned after the famous astronomical clock of the old City Square at Prague. Another of the clocks is so made mechanically that as the hour strikes a group of small figures, representing the Spillville band, appear and martial music is heard.