BOB FRISHMAN - BRIEF BIOGRAPHY

Bob Frishman was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in Andover, Massachusetts, where he lives today. He was introduced to horology - the science of timekeeping - by a chance encounter on Thanksgiving Day in 1980, and his passion for the subject remains undiminished forty-six years later. Bob graduated from George Washington University in 1973, majoring in political science, with one semester studying in Paris. He also volunteered for two summers on Kibbutz Kfar Masaryk in northern Israel. He worked ten years in the U.S. House of Representatives as a speechwriter, legislative assistant and press secretary for Congressman John Conyers of Detroit and then for Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm of Brooklyn, New York. For ten years he ran AKKO, Inc., based in Lawrence, Massachusetts; his family's acrylic-furniture manufacturing company. In 1992, he founded Bell-Time Clocks and began his full-time career of antique clock restoration, sales, scholarship, lecturing, writing, mentoring, and exhibit curating. His personal library of horology-related books now numbers more than eleven hundred volumes. While residing in Lawrence, he chaired the city’s Planning Board, and for ten years he served as a trustee of The White Fund, Inc., a local charitable foundation, and as a trustee of the Lawrence Public Library. As Chairman of the Time Symposium Committee of the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors (NAWCC), he created and organized international horological conferences at Winterthur, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, The Henry Ford Museum, The Museum of the American Revolution, Horological Society of New York, and in Nuremberg, Germany. He is the author of the national award-winning Edward Duffield: Philadelphia Clockmaker, Citizen, Gentleman, 1730-1803, published in 2024 by the American Philosophical Society Press. Bob is an NAWCC Silver Star Fellow, a Liveryman of London's Worshipful Company of Clockmakers, and an elected member of the American Antiquarian Society. He holds Proprietor Share No. 28 of the Boston Athenaeum, Share No. 8 of the Library Company of Philadelphia, and is a member of the Ross Society of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Age 74, he has been married since 1973 to writer Jeanne Schinto. Avid tennis players and spectators, they reside in Andover's historic Shawsheen Village.

Recent Article

In the fall of 2025, Bob was interviewed at his home by local longtime reporter Terry Date, noting Bob's recent donated restoration of an antique grandfather clock at a nearby public library. Bob regularly restores, at no charge, important clocks for non-profit cultural institutions, and follows up with a free lecture to their members and the public about their clocks and the history of clockmaking and timekeeping. The article can be read here.