Mora clock

A curvy, painted Swedish floor clock that farm families around Mora in Dalarna built in the winter months, for roughly eighty years.

What is a Mora clock?

A Mora clock is a Swedish longcase clock named after Mora, a district in the central province of Dalarna; a Berlin museum record gives Dala clock as another name for the form. It is easy to pick out: a tall wooden case, usually painted, that swells and narrows along its length instead of running straight like an English grandfather clock.

These were country clocks, made by farming families rather than city workshops. The Museum Europäischer Kulturen in Berlin notes that standing clocks became common in Swedish farmhouses during the 18th century. Buyers often ordered Mora clocks painted to taste, and they were popular wedding presents. Some owners wrote family names inside the back of the case, much as other households did in a family Bible.

See also: tall floor clocks from the English tradition on OnlineClock.app.

How a Mora clock was made

Clockmaking in Mora was a shared effort. According to Homes and Antiques magazine, farmers did the work in winter, when the ground was too hard to plow: a farmer made the mechanism, while a local carpenter usually built the case, and the finished clock was painted to the buyer's order.

Early cases used whatever wood was at hand, so no two look quite alike. Inside, the movement is simple: an eight-day mechanism that strikes the hours on two bells, and the Spalding Gentlemen's Society notes that early examples also carry a calendar hand. Many surviving clocks have had their original mechanism replaced at some point.

Power comes from cast-iron weights, and a pendulum regulates the movement. A dated example offered through the Antiques Trade Gazette, for instance, still had its original mechanism, two cast-iron weights, its pendulum and its winding key. Routes North, a Nordic travel site, notes that a traditional clock runs about eight days between windings.

History of the Mora clock

The trade is usually traced to Krang Anders Andersson, a Mora clockmaker who, according to the Spalding Gentlemen's Society museum, organized local farmers into a co-operative around 1795 so they could earn extra money. Homes and Antiques and the Antiques Trade Gazette both add that drought and famine in the late 1700s pushed Mora people to look for work in Stockholm, where some picked up clockmaking and brought it home.

Accounts of the exact span differ. The Spalding museum essay cites the Swedish physicist Gunnar Pipping's estimate of about 50,000 clocks made between the 1770s and 1850, while Homes and Antiques describes the craft lasting around 80 years. Both agree that the cottage industry faded once imported clocks became cheaper; the Spalding essay names German and American clocks arriving from around 1850.

Output was never huge in any single year. The Antiques Trade Gazette reports that at its peak Mora turned out about 1,000 clocks a year, and dated pieces survive from the trade's early decades, including one whose painted face carries the year 1787. Later pieces are dated too: the Berlin museum's example has the year 1841 on its case.

Styles and famous examples

Mora clocks came in two broad shapes that collectors still describe as female and male. In the Spalding Gentlemen's Society's words, the female form is the curvier one and the male form is straighter and more triangular. Homes and Antiques compares the rounded early bodies and feet to fashionable French Louis XV design, and notes that blue decoration is rare, because the ultramarine pigment it needed was expensive.

Homes and Antiques describes the clocks as embodying romantic Gustavian design. Their appeal has traveled well: the Spalding Gentlemen's Society notes strong demand in the United States, likely among people of Swedish descent, and the Mora clock in its own museum in Lincolnshire was imported from Sweden in 1903, as its Swedish shipping ticket shows.

The Berlin example shows the classic look in a museum setting: a painted wooden case about 194 cm tall with a rounded body and a white round dial. Many clocks also carry hand-painted flowers or scenes; the Spalding clock's front painting shows a family. Reproductions are widely made today, and many modern versions run on batteries rather than weights.

How to recognize one

Start with the case: a tall, painted body, often curving in and out, with no two quite alike. Then look at the dial for initials. The most familiar mark is the one associated with Krang Anders Andersson, though sources differ on how it reads: the Spalding museum describes a dial signed AAK as one of the earliest, Homes and Antiques gives AAS Mora, which it reads as Anders Andersson and Sons, and the Berlin museum's 1841 clock has A.A.S. on its dial.

Age shows. Homes and Antiques advises that an original Mora should not look too fresh, that worn original paint is a good sign, and warns that some sellers paint initials onto newer or reproduction cases. Because so many movements were replaced over two centuries, check the mechanism separately from the case, and remember that families often repainted these clocks over the generations.

See also: having an old eight-day movement looked at on OnlineClock.app.

Keep exploring

Sources

1. Musings from the Museum 35: The Mora Clock (Spalding Gentlemen's Society)
2. Standing clock 'Klocka', Mora, 1841, II A 5934 (Museum Europäischer Kulturen, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin)
3. Mora clock collecting guide (Homes and Antiques)
4. The web shop window: Swedish clock from 1787 (Antiques Trade Gazette)
5. What is a Swedish Mora clock? (Routes North)