Like clockwork

George McFadden's playful timepieces

by Leon Nigrosh

THE ENCHANTED CLOCKS OF GEORGE MCFADDEN
At the Museum of Our National Heritage, 33 Marrett Road, Lexington.

The Archangel Gabriel, Noah, and Jonah, along with gears, cogs, and wheels. Sound like the stuff of a quasi-religious, neo-industrial cult? No, they're products of the spirited mind of George McFadden. For nearly 30 years, McFadden (1904-1991) produced scores of animated cuckoo clocks, a dozen of which are now on long-term display at the Museum of Our National Heritage.

As a teenager, McFadden created an automated display of a soda-drinking Eskimo to help sell soft drinks at his family's Maine drug store. He met his wife, Alyce, a costume designer, during a stint at the Museum of Fine Arts School in Boston, and they collaborated on a host of theater productions around the state. It seems McFadden's talent knew no bounds, for he was also an accomplished jeweler. Perhaps his best-known pieces, though, are his mechanized holiday window displays for Boston department stores Filene's and now-defunct Jordan Marsh. Many of these displays have survived and are showcased each Christmas season by the city of Boston.

It was only after he retired that McFadden developed his passion for clocks, which, from his Winchester home, he repaired, specializing in mantle and grandfather clocks. To maintain his skills, he designed and built a clock with a humorous theme. McFadden carved each of the figures, crafted the complex inner mechanisms from spare parts, and painted the hand-built cases. As a final touch, he added distinctly non-traditional sound effects.

One of McFadden's earliest clocks is 1973's Snoopy. This small, house-shaped wall clock features coolly accurate likenesses of Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schultz's animal sidekicks. Snoopy swings from the pendulum, sporting a ridiculous grin, and Woodstock pokes his head out of the clock's tiny door on the hour.

The following year, McFadden unveiled his next clock, a complex piece depicting Noah's Ark. Mrs. Noah fishes off the stern of the craft. Inside, Noah performs a revolving dance with a zebra and a violin-playing lion. All along, the heads of various animals bob merrily to and fro from the portholes. On the quarter-hour, a dove holding an olive leaf pops out of a small door.

Some of McFadden's original story lines are a bit more racy. Take 1974's Castle, a handsomely painted and gilded rendition of a crenelated fortress. A cannon is mounted on its uppermost turret, and two smartly dressed heralds raise their trumpets to proclaim the quarter-hours. But that's not all: as the hour turns, a saucy wench opens the shutters and dumps a chamber pot out the window.

But several of the clocks McFadden produced in his later years are both humorous and foreboding. Doomsday features a winged Gabriel flying over a tombstone-crowded graveyard. One grave, marked "Everyman," opens on the hour. Another clock, this one inspired by Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick, animates Jonah's struggle in the maw of the whale. And in still another, a drunken angel pounds out chords on a pitching pipe organ. If you peer inside, you can see several small, cam-driven bellows that produce the music -- another testament to McFadden's ability to combine mechanics with art.

At 79, McFadden made what may be his final clock. The work depicts a young, mustachioed blacksmith hammering metal on an anvil. Perhaps McFadden was reminiscing about his younger days; at one time, he worked as a metalsmith. Whatever the inspiration may be, this two-and-a-half-foot-tall, spring-wound mantle clock is meticulously constructed and expertly finished. The love McFadden had for his work is evident in all of the pieces on display.

Indeed, McFadden's work is not to be missed. But there is a major disappointment with the exhibit's format: the clocks are displayed in locked showcases. And though the museum provides flashlights so we can better view the clocks' interior workings, it's for naught, as none of the clocks is currently operational. We're left to guess the actual movements of the whimsical figures and can only imagine what wondrous sounds would have burst forth every 15 minutes.

The museum is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. Call (781) 861-6559.