Judah Lowell started out in the field of clocks strictly as a salesman. However, he has taken his knowledge of the instruments and a love of puzzles and problem solving to Chicago, Virginia Beach, St. Paul, and now back to his hometown of Lexington. Going far beyond sales, Judah's talent is making some of the finest timepieces money can buy as good as new.
"I come from a problem solving area, that's how I first got interested in it, just finding why things that were supposed to work, don't," said Judah.
"The clocks themselves aren't anything I'm fixated to," he said. It's really just an interest in solving puzzles, not necessarily a love for clocks, that has him in the business, a fact he says many of his customers may find shocking or even "sacrilegious."
The walls of his store, Corner Clocks on Indiana Avenue, are covered with ticking timekeepers of all varieties: cuckoos, wall clocks, mantel clocks, heirloom clocks, and grandfather clocks. That's not the case at home, he said, where he has a contemporary grandfather clock-not an antique-for its quiet ticking, and a cuckoo that he rarely runs.
"Those are ones I like," he said, looking at a cheap store-bought clock hanging behind the counter of his store. "I don't have any antiques at the house; I get too worried having stuff like that of value at the house. A lot of people think that I collect because I repair. I do enough work at the shop on these things; I don't want them at home and have to pull up the chains and wind the thing. My arm's killing me by the time I get home. Just put in a battery and it's good for a year."
Not personally owning any of the rare and antique clocks he sells may be a strange quirk to some, but as far as the clock repairmen he's come across in the past, his aversion to bringing home expensive clocks isn't a bad quirk.
"Most people in the clock business are grumpy and rotten, really that's the standard," he said. "Most of the guys, they're not too customer-friendly."
Judah said he's been able to avoid that shortfall because he was a salesman first, and still fulfills that role, describing the intricacies and origins of clocks for sale in his store, in addition to his ability to fix them.
Judah was first introduced to clocks and trained by the father of a childhood friend, Edgar Hume, who owns The Clock Shop on Short Street. "He just gave me interest in it," Jonah said, recounting his younger days when Edgar first would give him puzzles to work, and later helped him learn his craft.
Now clock repair stores are getting fewer and further between. However, Jonah said there's still plenty of need for clock repairmen as timepieces made in the last half-century or so just aren't built like they used to.
"The ones that they made about 100 years ago, the plates are thicker and they were hardened brass and those would last actually for 200 or 300 year. That's why they're worth a lot more," he said. But the clocks of today will only last 25 to 30 years when properly maintained. But those that are neglected keep his business ticking.
"Most of the business comes from not oiling (the clocks enough or at all). We sell bottles of oil, tell them we'll do it (for them) and it's inexpensive, every three to four years to do it," he said. But the fact a bottle of oil is only $15, enough to keep one clock oiled for half a millennium doesn't keep many clocks from wearing out before their time.
Jonah can be found in his store four days a week, most often with his children in his care. The kids, he said, are very well behaved, which is especially good with fragile and delicate clock parts around. When not in the store, Judah spends part of his time either servicing clocks sold by furniture stores or making house calls to individuals without the means to travel to or transport a clock to Lexington.
While keeping clocks going keeps his business going, Jonah said he enjoys breaking the monotony of clock repair with solving problems with vintage toys, cash registers, scientific equipment, and music boxes.