Instruments · Sundial
Sundial, Nürnberg, 1579
- Maker / attribution
- Unrecorded in source
- Date
- 1579
- Historical period
- Renaissance Horology (1400 – 1600)
- Country of origin
- Unrecorded in source
- Place
- Nürnberg
- Object type
- Sundial
- Holding institution
- MAK – Museum of Applied Arts
- Accession / object no.
- F_1379
- Catalogue title (original)
- Folding sundial (English)
Record summary
Held and catalogued by MAK – Museum of Applied Arts (object number F_1379), this is a sundial, made in Nürnberg, dated 1579. The Atlas places it in the Renaissance Horology period (1400 – 1600) 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)
Klappsonnenuhren wurden auf Reisen verwendet. Das flache Kästchen besteht aus zwei durch Scharniere verbundene Tafeln. Auf der oberen Außentafel ist die drehbare Scheibe einer Monduhr, umgeben von Sternzeichen und Monaten und den Zahlen 1 bis 29 1/2 angebracht, wobei letztere das Ablesen der Sonnenuhr auch bei Mondlicht ermöglichen. Im Inneren befinden sich sowohl im Deckel als auch im Boden zwei Sonnenuhren mit italienischer Stundeneinteilung. In der Innenseite des Bodens ist auch ein Kompass mit Windrose eingezeichnet. Durch die seitlich angebrachte Stütze ermöglichte auch die Verwendung als äquatoriale Sonnenuhr.
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 An editor-reviewed English translation has not yet been published; we do not publish machine translations as authoritative text.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
Renaissance Horology (1400 – 1600)
Spring power makes clocks portable; Nuremberg and Augsburg produce the first watches; the Prague Orloj is built.
Instrument-making flourished in Nuremberg, Augsburg, Louvain and London: ivory diptych dials, astronomical compendia, astrolabes and nocturnals for wealthy patrons, navigators and scholars.
Read the period in the timelineMore instruments from this periodEarlier: Medieval Period
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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