Rolling Eye Clocks -- crazy German 1920s novelty timepieces

The Watchismo Times has a great feature on the J Oswald Company's "Rolling Eye Clocks," novelty timepieces in which the eyes of a sculptural head rotated around to display the time.

Rolling eye clocks - first patented in 1926 by the J. Oswald Company of Germany with early models carved of wood and cast from metal after World War II.
The dials are represented as the eyes separating the hours on the left and minutes to the right. This collection of cross-eyed genies, skulls, monkeys, gnomes, owls, and dogs (LOTS of dogs) are an interesting cast of antique novelty clocks.

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Anonymous

I too have the terrier and a black cat which have the green felt with a gold and red circle underneath them with a letter that looks like an S ,I don’t think its a sticker.I would like to know the value $$$………..I do know they were made in the Freiburg area of the Black Forest and they were first patented in 1926 ,Germany. Original J. Oswald Company.
eddierocks2005

i have a wooden terrior like this one ears are down and it has green felt and a gold sicker on its base does n e 1 know anything bout this
Charlie

I actually posted short article about these a few weeks ago:
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2007/08/16/monkey-tells-time-by-rolling-eyes/
Anonymous

It’s kind of spooky how much this looks like President Bush.
joejoejoe

My family has one of these clocks.

My grandfather bought one as a gift in the early 1940s while working in Bermuda as a aircraft mechanic for Pan Am. The model we have is a variation of the Genie, call it the Swami. I used to get yelled at as a kid for playing with the clock and winding it – not because it was valuable but the ‘tick,tick,tick’ is very loud.

The Swami model is stained wood, not painted, and has a turban similar to the Genie but with a different carved face and outfit. The outstretched palms hold a matching wooden coaster that my Mom thinks is original.