Instruments · Sundial
Sundial, Germany, 1700–1800
- Maker / attribution
- Unrecorded in source
- Date
- 1700–1800
- Historical period
- Early Modern Horology (1600 – 1750)
- Country of origin
- Germany
- Place
- Nuremberg = Nüremberg, Germany
- Object type
- Sundial
- Materials / technique
- copper alloy, glass
- Dimensions
- height 3 cm; width 10,5 cm; depth 4,7 cm; height 3,5 cm; diameter 4,7 cm
- Holding institution
- Musée du Louvre, Paris
- Accession / object no.
- OA 10724
- 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 10724), this is a sundial, made in Nuremberg = Nüremberg, Germany, 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, glass. Recorded dimensions: height 3 cm; width 10,5 cm; depth 4,7 cm; height 3,5 cm; diameter 4,7 cm. The record is illustrated with 5 photographs.
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)
Cet instrument inséré dans une boîte circulaire se compose d'une boussole sur laquelle un anneau inscrit d'une échelle horaire, et muni d'un gnomon triangulaire rabattable ( avec un espace apparement réservé pour un fil à plomb), constitue un cadran solaire utilisable à la latitude d'environ 50°. La boussole possède sur son fond un papier dessiné d'une rose des vents à trente-deux directions, avec une rosace en son centre et une fleur de lys pour le nord. Sur le revers du couvercle, une table sert à convertir en heures communes les heures mesurées la nuit à la lumière de la Lune. Elle se compose d'un petit disque rotatoire dont l'index pointe vers l'échelle de l'âge de la Lune sur un grand disque fixe ; un orifice ménagé dans le disque mobile laisse voir la phase de l'astre correspondant à son âge.
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 An editor-reviewed English translation has not yet been published; we do not publish machine translations as authoritative text.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
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 : ivoire = dent (tacheté) · Matériau : alliage cuivreux · Matériau : verre · Matériau : papier (avec polychromie rouge, noire et bleue) · Matériau : soie (verte)
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.
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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