Calendar types in watches

Anyone know about any mechanical wall clocks, grandfather clocks, or mantle clocks (? I mean ones that stand on their own) which show the date? It seems that this is a really commonly sought after feature of wrist watches but for some reason hard to find or non existent in mechanical non-wrist clocks.

Unfortunately they're not really a thing. Some grandfather/grandmother clocks came with moon phases, but innovation never made it further.

IMO mostly has to do with the fact that mechanical clocks didn't see much innovation over the past century. The most talented watch makers have gone on to watches and people largely stopped buying Grandfather clocks.

Not to mention, other obvious problems of weight, material costs, and the increased size requiring more power to turn all those gears.

Probably because you can more easily refer to a calendar on a wall when the clock doesn't move.

I have a mechanical wall clock in storage which shows the day of the week as well as the date --- it was made in Japan --- it's in storage 'cause it was over-tightened and the main spring broken, and rather than being repaired, it was just re-fastened, so now it runs fast and gains a couple of minutes each month (the chime is also rather loud for a 1,200 sq. ft. home).

Imagine how well it would be received if you said "My grandfather clock has a date display- except it's manual, you have to twist a little knob once a day to keep it correct."

That's how I feel about wall calendars.

Dang that's a shame. One would think though, if the mechanical design is already done for wristwatches, it should be trivial to port that design over to full-sized clocks, literally just scale the mechanism up!

FWIW I've seen some DIY enthusiasts do some really cool things, I think this one for instance turned out really cool and would be a breathtaking wall piece. Even better if it ran and was powered fully by the counterweight mechanism rather than electronically https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_8_N8HKOXw

Every 24 hours, advance the DoW through 360°/7 increments. At the same time, every 24 hours advance the DoM through 28, 29, 30, 31 increments. How do you now keep DoW and DoM in proper sync when DoM needs to be updated ~every other month?

I think at this stage of the game, none of these things are made for utility, they are made to flex watchmaking skill. Building something big isn’t as impressive and building something small. Unless you’re talking about the air clocks of Paris. Those are still rather impressive, because of the scale [0].

[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gol_p2aWrJg

You can build a habit of doing it every morning, like brushing your teeth. The physical act of fixing the date every day can help ground you and slow down the passage of days.

Hm. Maybe so, interesting thought.