Description
The Engstler 417QM cuckoo clock is one of the manufacturer's smallest cuckoo chalets: only 16 cm, and yet twelve melodies to play. A gentle format, ideal for small spaces as well as for giving.
Small format, big music
Behind this chalet lies the know-how of Engstler, a family manufacturer in Villingen-Schwenningen, in the Black Forest. Its musical quartz movement runs on batteries. On every full hour, the cuckoo pokes its beak out of its door, then a melody rises, chosen from twelve tunes, from “Mühle im Schwarzwald” to “Clementine”.
When the room darkens, a light sensor pauses the call and the music. To understand what sets this movement apart from a weight-driven mechanism, our guide presents the different Black Forest movements.
Green shutters and red mushroom
Under the grey roof, two flower boxes frame the cuckoo door. Lower down, two windows with green shutters surround the dial with Roman numerals, on a façade of walnut-stained wood.
On the left, a fir tree watches over a small red mushroom with white spots; on the right, a wooden post carries a small board. At just 16 cm high, it fits easily between two frames or above a desk. In the same compact spirit, Heidi's chalet features figurines inspired by the famous little girl of the mountains.
This little mushroom is a familiar nod in Germany: the fly agaric brings good luck there, and a lucky person is called a “Glückspilz”, literally a lucky mushroom.
