Engraver / instrument maker
Thomas Gemini
Also recorded as: Gemini, Thomas · Thomas Lambrit · Thomas Geminus
Flemish-born London engraver who made some of the earliest English astrolabes.
Thomas Gemini, also known as Thomas Lambrit, came to London from the southern Low Countries and worked as an engraver, printer and maker of mathematical instruments. He engraved the copperplate anatomical illustrations of the Compendiosa totius anatomie delineatio (1545), adapted from Vesalius, and made astrolabes and other instruments for English patrons, introducing the Leuven style of instrument making to England. Several of his instruments survive, including an astrolabe of the 1550s in the Museo Galileo, Florence.
Gemini was one of many craftsmen from the Low Countries who settled in London in the mid-sixteenth century, and he worked in Blackfriars. Besides the Latin anatomy of 1545, he printed an English edition in 1553 and books by Leonard Digges, including A Prognostication of Right Good Effect (1555).
Only a small number of his signed instruments survive. Their strapwork, lettering and engraved retes follow the style of the Leuven workshop of Gemma Frisius and Gualterus Arsenius, which shows how instrument-making knowledge travelled with migrating craftsmen.
- Country
- England (born Low Countries)
- City / centre
- London
- Life / active
- Active c. 1540–1562
- Status
- Historical individual
- Key people
- Thomas Gemini
Innovations & specialities
- Early English astrolabes in the Leuven style
- Copperplate engraving in Tudor London
Works by Thomas Gemini in the catalogue
Open in the catalogue →
Instruments · 1550–1559
Astrolabe by Thomas Gemini, England, 1550–1559
Museo Galileo, Florence
Instruments · 1551
Horizontal sundial, by assumed to have been made by Thomas Gemini, 1551, with initials W.B. which possibly refers to William Buckley.
Science Museum Group, London
Instruments · 1559
Astrolabe by Thomas Geminus, England, 1559
History of Science Museum, University of Oxford
Linked through the Atlas maker authority list, which reconciles the spellings used by different institutions. Attributions are as stated by each holding institution or auction house.
