I am cuckoo for cuckoo clocks—and I’m not shamed to admit it!

But one cuckoo clock is not as good as all others. If you want Old-World quality, you need a cuckoo clock from the Black Forest in Germany. Part of The Black Forest Clock Association, Hönes is a family business hand-crafting cuckoo clocks in multiple styles, including their new chalet clock featuring a house with clean lines and a geometric clock face.

A perfect gift for interior designers and architects, a Hönes cuckoo clock encapsulates the beauty and ingenuity of the Black Forest region in Germany. The enchanting landscape is replete with towering trees, lush ferns, and verdant mosses. Half-timbered houses, thatch-roofed farmhouses, and railroad stations emerge from undulating hills and cobblestoned villages. And Black Forest animals seem to have walked right off the pages of a fairy tale: silvery badgers with striking black and white heads, spotted deer with chestnut fur, and red squirrels with fashionable ear tufts and long tails curled into question marks.

Cuckoo clocks don’t have to be ornate to be genuine Black Forest heirlooms. Manager Christian Schwarz of Hönes explains the aesthetic evolution: “We started making modern cuckoo clocks in 1988, but it depends what you call a modern clock. Even in the 70s some clocks have been made that were special and different to the traditional clocks, but nobody called them modern.”

Whatever the style, Hönes cuckoo clocks all feature handmade clockworks, including the signature pipes and bellows that produce the cuckoo sound. All of them also come with automaton cuckoo birds announcing the time with great fanfare.

For another ingenious gift idea, see Cheese Clock.