A Guide to the Best of Southern California : ANTIQUES : An Audible Difference

For most of us, time steals away invisibly and silently on the whispered wheels of quartz and NiCad batteries. At Jacobsohn’s Clocks, near the Beverly Center, the passage is audible and beautiful. The store’s antique and collectors’ clocks, which come from “hither, thither and yon,” says owner Arthur Nunley, are as visually striking as they are noisy.

In the front window is a 19th-Century timepiece at least a yard square; its mechanical movement simultaneously re-enacts several battle scenes ($2,700). On one counter is a marble and slate Art Deco clock featuring a woman reclining with a panther at her feet ($1,695). There are grandfather clocks, kitchen clocks and regulators. There are delicate French ceramic clocks and English clocks of burr walnut. In general, the clocks are surprisingly affordable--$400 to $800--considering their age and delicacy.

But a Chinese table clock from the mid-1800s of walnut inlaid with mother-of-pearl costs $2,495. And an exceedingly rare French Boulle clock--a 19th-Century copy of an 18th-Century design--made of tortoise and brass is priced at, gasp, $14,350.

Jacobsohn’s Antique Clocks, 8304 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles; (213) 655-6105.