Cleaning out a family home that has been lived in for generations can feel like opening a time capsule. Every closet, drawer, and storage room seems to contain something that raises a new question.
Recently, my girlfriend was helping search through the house where her grandmother and aunt have lived all their lives when she came across several unusual objects.
At first glance, they looked like oversized pinecones or perhaps some kind of unusual Christmas decoration. But there was one obvious problem:
They were solid—and incredibly heavy.
There was no way these were meant to be hanging from a Christmas tree.
So What Are They?
The unusual ridged shape and their considerable weight provide an important clue.
These appear to be vintage pinecone-shaped weights used with mechanical clocks, particularly old cuckoo clocks and other traditional weight-driven clocks.
The weights were designed to hang from chains beneath the clock. Their weight provides the force that drives the clock’s mechanical movement as the weights slowly descend.
The distinctive ribbed or “pinecone
” design is also strongly associated with traditional cuckoo-clock weights.
