Clock Museum Georges Lemoine

The museum was established in 1993 by Mrs. DUBERNET, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Georges LEMOINE, to promote her parents’ life course.

He was a watchmaker, based in Lorris in 1936. Besides that, he used to do all works that required some precision: ceremonies photographer, "optician" or glasses adjuster, wireless maintenance (Radio) ... etc

She used to manufacture hats in a workshop where she employed an assistant.

After Mrs Dubernet death, the town of Lorris bought the locations and inherited the collections in the museum.

After transformation of the premises, an association of volunteers took over the museum to maintain, enrich and open it to public.

This same association also created the "workshop pendulum", where a group of amateurs restores the exposed objects by practicing the watchmaking techniques and expertise as used by artisans of the last century.

AT THE MUSUEM, YOU CAN SEE:

- A wide panorama of watchmaking belonging to the last two centuries, mainly popular clock pieces and timepieces. These pieces were likely to pass - one way or another – through a rural watchmaker shop for maintenance or repair.

- You will also see many tools that were used by the artisans. Each tool has its function and each operation often required special tools for different operations of "patching up".

This operation consists of; completely dismantling the movements, cleaning them up, checking the pivots and bearings, possibly polishing them or resealing them, checking the springs, changing or shortening them when necessary. Once these steps are finished, the mechanism had to be restored, tested and possibly reinstalled at the client place.

- Watches, alarm clocks, chimes, mantel clocks, often called "pendulums of Paris': little mechanical marvels, built almost identically, since the late 18th Century until the 1950s.

Each piece can evoke the life course of your parents, grandparents or ancestors, reflecting sometimes passing trends, but also the constant need to measure the passing time.

You can also see some spectacular objects:

- The clock of the steeple of Lorris, built in 1861 and maintained operational until 1969.

- Some beautiful “Comtois” clocks,that decorated every house, especially in the countryside.

- A badging clock that will remind some of you the constraints of working at the factory.

- An extraordinary and unique piece: an entirely wood clock, built by a "hairy" in the trenches of the Somme during the 1914-1918 war. He only used to build using boards, nails and iron wires, collected from the ammunition boxes.

- You can see many more parts, each of which has a story.... I ask only to tell it to you.

- You can also take a look at what was the former workshop of our association.

The organization and expansion project of the Museum that has currently been achieved has allowed integrating this to the exhibition space.

The workshops were transferred to the adjacent room that you can see are relatively well equipped, we will have the basic tools to perform many repairs, provided that we totally control the technique.