Instruments · Sundial
Sundial, Czech Republic, 1593–1613
- Maker / attribution
- Unrecorded in source
- Date
- 1593–1613
- Historical period
- Early Modern Horology (1600 – 1750)
- Country of origin
- Czech Republic
- Place
- Czech Republic
- Object type
- Sundial
- Holding institution
- MAK – Museum of Applied Arts
- Accession / object no.
- F_1344
- Catalogue title (original)
- Column sundial (English)
Record summary
Held and catalogued by MAK – Museum of Applied Arts (object number F_1344), this is a sundial, made in Czech Republic, dated 1593–1613. The Atlas places it in the Early Modern Horology period (1600 – 1750) of its Instruments collection. 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 from MAK – Museum of Applied Arts (German)
Die allgemeinen und planetarischen Stundenbezeichnungen, der Tierkreis und eine Tabelle der Wochenplaneten für die 12 Monate sind in die Zylinderröhre eingraviert. Der Schattenzeiger ist unter dem Deckel eingeklappt. In dem abnehmbaren Untersatz befindet sich ein Tintenfass und eine Streusandbüchse. Besitzer der Sonnenuhr war der italienische Arzt Franciscus de Paduanis von Forli, der um 1603 Kaiser Rudolf II. in Prag behandelt hat. Sein Wappen ist an der Unterseite der Streusandbüchse angebracht.
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 An editor-reviewed English translation has not yet been published; we do not publish machine translations as authoritative text.
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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