Instruments · Horizontal sundial
Horizontal sundial, 1700–1800
- Maker / attribution
- Unrecorded in source
- Date
- 1700–1800
- Historical period
- Early Modern Horology (1600 – 1750)
- Country of origin
- Unrecorded in source
- Object type
- Horizontal sundial
- Materials / technique
- copper alloy, silver, glass, paper
- Dimensions
- diameter 4,2 cm; thickness 1,5 cm; height 2,8 cm
- Holding institution
- Musée du Louvre, Paris
- Accession / object no.
- OA 10718
- Credit line
- Musée du Louvre, Département des Objets d'art du Moyen Age, de la Renaissance et des temps modernes
- Catalogue title (original)
- Cadran-boussole horizontal (French)
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Record summary
Held and catalogued by Musée du Louvre, Paris (object number OA 10718), this is a horizontal sundial, dated 1700–1800. The Atlas places it in the Early Modern Horology period (1600 – 1750) of its Instruments collection. Materials and techniques recorded by the source: copper alloy, silver, glass, paper. Recorded dimensions: diameter 4,2 cm; thickness 1,5 cm; height 2,8 cm. The record is illustrated with 1 photograph.
Assembled from the source record's structured fields. Dates and attributions are given as the source states them; where a field is missing the Atlas leaves it blank rather than estimating.
Catalogue description
Catalogue description — Musée du Louvre (French)
L'instrument se compose d'une boussole insérée dans une boîte circulaire moulurée. Un anneau inscrit d'une échelle horaire, posé sur la boussole et munie d'un gnomon triangulaire rabattable (avec un espace réservé pur un fil à plomb), constitue un cadran solaire utilisable à la latitude d'environ 47°. Le fond de la boussole possède une feuille de papier où figure une rose des vents avec un cercle perlé en son centre et trente-deux directions, dont huit sont désignées par leur initiales en allemand (ou en néerlandais); le nord, indiqué par une fleur de lys, est décalé de 40° ouest pour la déclinaison magnétique. L'aiguille, délogée de son support, est interrompue par une petite traverse à l'une de ses extrémités.
Shown in the original language of the source catalogue. An editor-reviewed English translation has not yet been published; we do not publish machine translations as authoritative text.
Dating and period as catalogued (French)
Date de création/fabrication : 1700 - 1800 (bibliographie/travail de référence)
Shown in the original language of the source catalogue. An editor-reviewed English translation has not yet been published; we do not publish machine translations as authoritative text.
Materials and techniques as catalogued (French)
Matériau/Technique : Alliage cuivreux, argent, verre, papier, acier bleui · Matériau : alliage cuivreux · Matériau : argent · Matériau : verre · Matériau : papier · Matériau : acier (bleui)
Shown in the original language of the source catalogue. An editor-reviewed English translation has not yet been published; we do not publish machine translations as authoritative text.
Inscriptions & marks
Inscription : ; "S R" (sur l'échelle horaire)
Provenance
Collection Nicolas Landau (1887-1979) ; legs Marcelle Landau, 1980
Historical context
Early Modern Horology (1600 – 1750)
Huygens' pendulum and balance spring transform accuracy; English makers develop the anchor and deadbeat escapements.
Pocket sundials, Butterfield dials and sandglasses remained essential companions to imperfect clocks; navigators used sandglasses and the log line; observatories began to combine telescopes with pendulum clocks.
Read the period in the timelineMore instruments from this periodEarlier: Renaissance Horology
Atlas type guide
Sundials and solar time-finders
A sundial tells time from the position of a shadow cast by a gnomon or style. Because the sun's apparent motion depends on latitude, every fixed dial is laid out for a particular latitude, and portable dials either carry a latitude scale or are made for one region. Sundials show local apparent solar time, which drifts against mean (clock) time by up to about sixteen minutes over the year — the equation of time.
Portable dials were the pocket instruments of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Nuremberg and Augsburg workshops produced folding ivory diptych dials with inset compasses; English and French makers sold brass horizontal dials, ring dials and the Butterfield type; Japanese and Chinese makers had their own traditions of compass dials. After mechanical watches became reliable, dials remained in use for setting them, and nineteenth-century heliochronometers were built to correct directly for the equation of time.
What to look for
- The latitude engraved on the dial plate or a latitude arc on the gnomon — it shows where the dial was meant to be used.
- The type of hour lines: equal (equinoctial) hours, Italian or Babylonian hours counted from sunset or sunrise, or unequal temporal hours on early and Islamic instruments.
- An inset magnetic compass and whether a magnetic-declination mark is drawn on its card — a useful dating clue because declination changes over time.
- Maker's signatures and town marks: Nuremberg compass-makers (Kompassmacher) often struck a personal mark and the town's punch.
- Additional scales such as lunar volvelles, wind roses, perpetual calendars or lists of cities with their latitudes.
Dating clues
- Ivory diptych dials are characteristic of Nuremberg between about 1500 and 1700.
- Butterfield-type dials with a bird-shaped adjustable gnomon point to Paris workshops from the late seventeenth century onward.
- Equation-of-time tables engraved on the plate became common after the mid-seventeenth century, once pendulum clocks made the difference between solar and mean time obvious.
General guidance written by the Atlas editors about this kind of object. It is not a statement about this particular piece; for that, rely on the source record above and on physical examination.
Read next:The history timeline
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