Tom and Jan Moberg from Owosso, Michigan, are members of NAWCC Great Lakes Chapter 6 and are well known to clock collectors as professional reverse-glass painters who specialize in restoring, as well as creating new, reverse-painted glass for clocks. When I asked Tom how this specialized career began, he said that he became interested in clocks at an early age. As a youth, he spent his summers at the family hunting lodge on Hamlin Lake near Ludington, MI, where his parents had an old clock. He was intrigued by its tick-tock noise and gong strike. This was the spark for Tom’s interest in clock collecting. At 18 he received a tip on an old clock from a fellow worker at a warehouse in Owosso. He went to take a look and brought it home. This was the first clock of many. When he was 20 he joined the NAWCC. A local clock collector, Hugh Witham, saw Tom’s name listed as a new member in the NAWCC Bulletin and invited him to his house to see his clock collection. Over time they became good friends and went on many weekend clock buying trips together. Hugh knew Tom was a good artist and had won awards for his work in high school. He prompted Tom to try reverse glass painting on some of his clocks. Although Tom did not keep his early efforts, with more experience he became a competent painter. An article in the August 1970 Bulletin titled, “Some Notes Concerning Reverse Painting on Glass,” by Lee H. Davis, was a big help in correcting some of the problems Tom was having painting the glass. Tom eventually began working at a die-casting shop in Owosso, and continued to paint glass and collect clocks in his spare time. During this time he met his wife, Jan. Two weeks before their marriage he was laid off from his die-casting job. Fortunately, his new wife had an excellent background in art and together they advertised in the NAWCC Mart as reverse-glass painters. By 1978 their expanding customer base enabled them to do restoration and new glass painting full-time. They worked out of their small home in Owosso. Tom painted in a very small room in his basement while Jan worked upstairs on the kitchen table. This arrangement continued for the next 26 years. In January 2004 they moved a few miles out of town to a new home with a beautiful workshop. Jan and Tom do glass restoration and complete glass painting. Several clockmakers rely exclusively on them for glass painting. Many clock collectors also send them glass work. Tom and Jan work as a team. Jan usually lays out the gold leaf and Tom etches the gold. They work together painting scenes on the glass. However, Tom does all the restoration and touch-up of old reverse-painted glass. Tom and Jan explained some of their painting and gold-leafing techniques. They said that cleaning the glass prior to painting on it is the most important step in the process. If the glass is not perfectly clean, the paint and gold leaf will peel off. They use 0000 steel wool and Comet scouring powder to wash any oils or foreign matter from the glass. Once this step has been completed, the glass is ready to be gold-leafed and painted. The gold leafing is usually applied before any scenes are painted in. They use Knox gelatin powder sizing to fix the gold leaf to the glass. When the sizing is completely dry, the gold leaf is ready for etching. A sharp stick is used to etch the gold leaf, creating beautiful designs. Once the etching is finished, they usually use black paint behind the gold-leafed area, which gives the gold a black background. When the gold leafing is complete, the glass is ready for the scene to be painted in. If lines are needed in the scenes, Tom and Jan use watered-down Higgins India ink. They found that this brand works well. Once the lines are drawn in and dry, the glass is ready to paint. They mix Windsor and Newton Liquin with the oil paints. Then they mix the correct color and paint it on. The beauty of this manufacturer’s medium is that it takes a long time to set up, giving them plenty of time to paint complicated scenes and multiple glasses. To speed up drying time, the glass is placed on a heating pad, and it usually needs to dry overnight. Each individual color on the glass is added only after the paint is dried from the previous painted area. One can see this is a tedious process, which is why they work on many glasses at the same time. They usually have between 50 and 100 glasses in production at any given time. All the glass work is completed entirely by hand. Pictured here are a few of the thousands of glass panels that they have restored or repainted through the years. Our congratulations to Tom and Jan, two of the finest glass restorers in America. Arnold C. Van Tiem is a full-time watch and clock repair instructor at the Career Preparation Center in Sterling Heights, Michigan. He is an NAWCC Fellow, director of Great Lakes Chapter 6 of the NAWCC, and secretary of the Research and Education Council, American Watch and Clockmakers Institute. Photography by Arnold Van Tiem. | 
