A little bit about me....
In 1965 David Holmes walked into a 'Junk Shop' in the north of England and asked the price of a grubby 12" English Dial Clock with a fusee movement. The man put it on the scales and quoted for its weight in scrap brass!
Since that day, David has collected, pulled apart and cleaned up all manner of English, American, French, German and Swedish and Danish clocks. The fascinating Danish Bornholm longcase clock would not be with us today but for a shipwreck off the coast of the the tiny island of Bornholm in the middle of the Baltic sea in 1744. You can see the Bornholm clocks for sale on the 'CLOCKS FOR SALE' PAGE.
For the last 20 years, he has specialised; travelling through France, searching for antique French clocks and bringing back to his home in Gloucestershire, as many Comtoise long case clocks (Morbier tall clocks if you're a US reader) as he could wrest from contrary French farmers at any one time, and squeeze into, and on top of, a tired old Mercedes Estate.
With a long-suffering wife looking on (sometimes), these clocks are affectionately rebuilt and put back into circulation so that they can live another 150 years or so, instead of turning into dust - and scrap metal! There are usually two or three of these naive country clocks in the process of rebuilding in his Cotswold workshop.
His book: 'COMTOISE Ironman and Survivor of the Clock World 2nd Edition' is an orderly record of the above.
In between all that, he managed to fit in a career as a writer and Creative Director of a multinational advertising agency in London and Sydney Australia.
Since that day, David has collected, pulled apart and cleaned up all manner of English, American, French, German and Swedish and Danish clocks. The fascinating Danish Bornholm longcase clock would not be with us today but for a shipwreck off the coast of the the tiny island of Bornholm in the middle of the Baltic sea in 1744. You can see the Bornholm clocks for sale on the 'CLOCKS FOR SALE' PAGE.
For the last 20 years, he has specialised; travelling through France, searching for antique French clocks and bringing back to his home in Gloucestershire, as many Comtoise long case clocks (Morbier tall clocks if you're a US reader) as he could wrest from contrary French farmers at any one time, and squeeze into, and on top of, a tired old Mercedes Estate.
With a long-suffering wife looking on (sometimes), these clocks are affectionately rebuilt and put back into circulation so that they can live another 150 years or so, instead of turning into dust - and scrap metal! There are usually two or three of these naive country clocks in the process of rebuilding in his Cotswold workshop.
His book: 'COMTOISE Ironman and Survivor of the Clock World 2nd Edition' is an orderly record of the above.
In between all that, he managed to fit in a career as a writer and Creative Director of a multinational advertising agency in London and Sydney Australia.