Pictured on the left: Mike Symonds is retired. He now enjoys restoring old clocks. Pictured on the right: This clock features a very ornately enamelled, decorated case, built in France around 1840. The style of this one’s movement won the Gold Medal of excellence at the Paris Exposition, the same year that the Eiffel Tower was the main new attraction.
Time to Keep
If you are old enough to remember the song “Time in a Bottle” perhaps you might recognise this clock.
Okay, maybe not. Time in a Bottle was a Jim Croce song from 1972.
The clock is a bit older. In fact, it is a lot older. It dates back to the 1790s.
Yes it is possible George Washington saw this clock. The first US president lived to be 67 years old. He was born February 22, 1732, and passed away on December 14, 1799.
That is right, this clock was tick-tocking and displaying time when George Washington was still alive.
And guess what? The clock does not plug into an electric wall socket or run on batteries.
This gem uses weights, gravity and springs to turn the gears and drive the hands to display the correct time.
Mike Symonds, a hobbyist clock repair man, found it and is bringing it back to life. He has already taken the complete internal workings apart. He has cleaned and inspected every single piece and is now reassembling it! Already the gears are whirling!
And you can tell Mike loves his work. He sets his tools up on a table facing out his apartment’s sliding glass doors that reveals a beautiful view of the Simpson Bay Lagoon.
He dismantles the clock in what he calls bits and pieces, yes sounds British doesn’t it? Well, he is, and visits St. Maarten regularly.
He once ran a London Based preschool system that catered to approximately 500 children. For his work with the children’s day care company, Mike was awarded the title “A Freeman in the City of London”.
Then in the 1980s he was attending night school and took classes on horologic. That did it. He was hooked. He started working on old clocks for fun and has not stopped.
“I have worked on many very historical pieces with great provenance, especially related to the Russian revolution in 1917,” explained Mike.
You might notice that on the clock face he is currently working on, there is a display showing five sailing ships. Two at the centre of the dial fly the Netherlands flag. The three at the top of the dial (which move left and right) fly a black, white and black striped flag that appears to be the old Prussian standard.
Mike became such a noted clock expert that he was invited to help identify a number of mechanical objects dating from the 1500s held by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. And at least one of his restored clocks is on display in a museum.
But for Mike clock repair is not a job, it is an adventure. He loves to solve mysteries from the past by working on different movements from all over the world.
