`Time which antiquates Antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things, hath yet spared these minor Monuments'. The minor monuments of which Sir Thomas Browne wrote in this passage from Hydriotaphia were funerary urns, but the term is no less appropriate for the instruments of time measurement that have survived the ravages of that of which they take the measure. Indeed with Browne's words in mind these objects take on a greater piquancy. Sundials and other instruments are indeed monuments - monuments not because they are large, grand and imposing (in a word monumental), nor because they commemorate anything, but because they memorialize. They bring into memory past ways of measuring time, encapsulate in themselves the actual means of doing it, and so they reveal to us something of lost mentalities. They are monuments to the past because they have survived it.
Fig.1 Miniature Safavid Persian astrolabe, signed by Muhammad Mahdî al-Khâdim al-Yazdî, late 17th century.
Any object that has escaped from the `dark backward and abysm of time' that Shakespeare understood so well, deserves our respect. Objects that display mastery of artistry and ingenuity of conception, command our wonder and admiration. More, they offer us, if they have not been too highly polished, repaired and rebuilt, a small but effective path to understanding something of those lost, forgotten, alien but enticingly exotic societies of the past which constitute the cultural heritage we now seem so anxious to reclaim. Instruments are particularly powerful agents of such understanding for not only do they encapsulate ideas and techniques which we may hope to explicate, but they are also international. Sundials, which span the civilizations of East and West, resemble the societies which created them in their mixture of shared characteristics and regional differences only they are less conflictual. Astrolabes, although less widely spread throughout the world - a fact that in itself gives matter for reflection -- also offer problems for understanding. `A mathematical jewel', as Hrotsvitha perhaps called the astrolabe several centuries before John Blagrave did, is exactly what is the miniature persian astrolabe shown in figure 1. But why should it have been made? It can hardly have had practical intent. Any astrolabe is hard enough to read and handle, one this small (48mm) becomes almost impossible. Were it a solitary item one might explain it as a tour de force, a simple display of virtuosity by a master craftsman and the inscription on it `the purpose of this engraving is to outlast us' might be taken as confirmation of this (it can also be read in the opposite sense as an expression of humility). But the astrolabe is not unique. It is one of a group of at least three, perhaps more, miniature astrolabes which were all produced in Safavid Persia within a few years of each other. `Why' is a question that for the moment must remain without an answer, but seeking for one offers the prospect of hours, if not years, of fascinating delving into the cultural attitudes of safavid high society, besides the pleasure that the object itself provides.
Fig.2 Unusual enameled gold finger-ring incorporating an horizontal string gnomon sundial. Probably Vienna, c. 1860-70.
Understanding and delight in this case may eventually walk together. Understanding an object it might be thought should be easier when it stems from the past that is more directly our own and not that of another society. Let us think for a while about this 19th century copy of a 16th century jewel - a ring incorporating a sundial (Fig. 2). At a first level it is easy enough to find reasons for its making in the 19th century - the desire to deceive, the desire to profit from the provision of a much coveted but exceptionally rare object from the past, a craft-man's desire to discover whether he could indeed make such a thing, that it should pass for old being the test of his ability. At a second level, however, it is more difficult to understand why such a useless object should ever have been made at all. Why should 16th century men or women have wanted it? Fashion, rarity, fascination with the skill which would undoubtedly have to be exercised to make it? All these certainly may have played their part and clearly did because miniaturized objects - especially timepieces of all kinds - were particularly popular among the very wealthy in the 16th century. But a full answer to the question leads us to confrontation with a mentality alien from that of today. A mentality for which personal time-measuring instruments were still a novelty, when the structure of private and public life was only partly regulated by time (and that a flexible time in which fifteen or thirty minutes broke no appointment), when wealth had to be displayed in order for social position to be maintained, when the failure of king, queen or noble to consume luxuriously could be a reproach to them, a blemish on their standing, and in extreme cases a threat to their position. This was a world in which the highest artistry could seem diabolic or divine, in which skill evoking wonder and amazement was sought out for incorporation in cabinets of curiosities which in themselves were intended to be microcosms of the world both natural and divine. If such cabinets were also indicators of status both intellectual and material, they could also be vehicles for contemplation conveying moral and spiritual lessons when rightly considered. A ring, such as that of which we have a copy here, could find a place in such collections and play these many roles. Perhaps it is the coexistence of the multiplicity of meanings that such an object could have that is the most difficult to seize today. It is perhaps in thus forcing us to become imaginative in looking at the past that the true value of these arcane antiquities lies.
Seth Atwood's original aim for his collection was to illustrate the milestones, the great peaks of achievement in time-measurement. The first time-measuring instruments of all -- water clocks and sundials - of which our oldest examples come from Egypt; early weight-driven clocks; the personalizing of time with the invention of watches and the development of pocket sundials; the discovery of the pendulum and the balance-spring; the resolution of the longitude problem, the application of electricity and the coming of quartz, were the peaks that he wished to illustrate. Uproariously laughed at on announcing this programme, some fifteen years later Atwood had largely achieved his objective, but in doing so he came to realize that peaks of achievement do not occur in isolation, that there is a technical and social context from which they erupt. Soon therefore he was assembling fine examples in all their variety of the regularly produced instruments which, whether by evolution or reaction, made the peak achievements possible. It was this confrontation of the, often extraordinary, ordinary instruments with the exceptional, which made the Time Museum in its maturity such a remarkable and instructive place. Thanks to the quality and variety of the pieces displayed a full picture of the development of time-measurement could be obtained. In the sequence of sundials, examples of most of the wide variety of forms that they could take were illustrated. There were both altitude and direction dials, multiple instruments combining several instruments into one compendious object of the kind so beloved of Renaissance men, aficionados of multum in parvo. One of the simplest items, an hour ring fragment from a late medieval pocket compass dial, an object of the highest rarity, illustrates the moment when, thanks to the application of the magnetic compass, direction dials could rival altitude dials in smallness and portability. It was the moment when personal time became part of European consciousness.
Fig.3 Silver portable Butterfield dial signed by the inventor, French, c. 1700.
In this selection of dials, a richly made, but severely practical dial, such as the Butterfield dial signed by the maker (Fig. 3) who seems to have invented it, Michael Butterfield, rubs shoulders (perhaps one should say edges) with ecclesiastical jewels, crucifix dials by Adriaan Zeelst, and whimsical fantasies such as an ivory dial in the form of a lute. In time, the exuberant ornament and multiplicity of functions of Renaissance dials gives way to the severer dials of the late 17th and 18th centuries where surfaces are left uncluttered, free from extraneous decoration, in the interests of clarity for the reading of the scales divided to minutes, even half or quarter minutes, of what were now precision instruments. Functionality, however, has its own beauty as a plain, but rich inclining dial by Richard Glynne, or a large universal equinoctial ring dial by John Rowley show. Dials became precise largely because clocks did - dials being needed to set the clocks - and the influence of the clock was such that dials, themselves began to incorporate gearing. Clock-makers themselves also began to make (or have made) dials for supply with their clocks. One example, which twenty years ago would surely have found its place in the Time Museum, carries the signature of that most highly reputed clockmaker Thomas Tompion.
... But the dials mentioned do not just represent themselves. They also represent a response to social need, to fashion, to a fascination with dial construction for instruction and for pleasure which is only now, as practical dialling experiences a European wide renaissance, becoming fully comprehensible. If all the dials once in the Time Museum were very suitable objects to adorn a gentleman's home or person, designing a dial in the late 17th and 18th centuries also became something appropriate to him. For so doing tools and instruments were designed. Less esteemed than the objects that they served to create, rather few have survived. One that has is particularly interesting, a peculiar instrument by Thomas Haye.
Fig.4 Machine for making sundials from Ignace Gaston Pardies' Deux Machines propres à faire les quadrans, avec très-grande facilité (1673).
The instrument is a `machine for making sundials' and it was devised by the Jesuit priest Ignace Gaston Pardies (1636-1673) in about 1660 (Fig. 4). The purpose of the machine was to make easy an occupation which should be pleasurable but which ordinarily was tedious despite being curious and useful. Listen to Pardies himself in the preface to the booklet in which he described the instrument before us Deux Machines propres à faire les quadrans, avec très-grande facilité (1673):
The difficulty that is experienced in the practice of dials, & in that tedious series of different operations that one is obliged to carry out when the common method is followed, usually destroys the pleasure that one should have in an exercise which is otherwise so useful and curious. For this reason inventions which render it easy cannot be too much esteemed.
Pardies was not modest in his claims. With his two instruments
one can learn, in less than an hour, the way of making all sorts of dials, and what has been learnt can be practised, like a game (comme on se joüant), making, on walls and in rooms, all kinds of sundials with the greatest ease.
The machine itself, Pardies tells us, can be made in wood or better in brass or some softer metal. Haye's example in brass is then `of the better sort'. The instrument is made up of three parts: the base (the horizon), a vertical plate (the meridian) mounted on the base and at right angles to it, which carries a quadrantal degree scale into which slots a semi-circular plate adjustable within the scale. Slotted onto this, at right angles to it, is a circular plate engraved on both sides with a double twelve hour scale reading to 15 minutes. Although this plate, which makes a tight friction fit with the semi-circular plate has always to be at right angles to it, its position may be changed against the zodiacal calendar or `trigon of signs' engraved on the semi-circular plates. Of this Pardies remarks that people only interested in using the instrument
need not trouble to know how these signs or months are marked out, as the instrument being available [scilicet from instrument-makers] already finished and graduated, they can use these to make dials in the way that will be explained.
Fig.5 Thomas Haye's version of Pardies' sciaterra, French early 18th century.
The instrument by Thomas Haye illustrated (Fig. 5) is clearly one of these `ready made instruments'. It was completed by a plumb set on the vertical edge of the meridian plate which is unfortun„ately now lost, and threads running from the centre and the bottom end of the diameter. The use of the instrument was to draw dials on any available surface. If a mural dial was to be drawn the method was as follows: A solid table was set up close to the wall on which the dial was to be drawn, distant away from it for a distance equal to the estimated length of the gnomon to be erected. Pardies' instrument was placed on the table and carefully levelled using the plumb. The semi-circle calendar plate was then adjusted for latitude against the 90o scale marked on the meridian. After that the circular hour plate is slotted into place `so that one of its surfaces touches the centre without covering if. Each side of the plate is graduated, one side being marked `superior', the other `inferior'. The upper side is used for the winter six months, the lower for the summer six months.
Now action can begin.
The sun shining' says Pardies who had a gift for stating the obvious, `turn the meridian plate on its pivot so that the shadow of the circle falls precisely on the axis of the degree of the zodiacal sign or the day of the month corresponding with the time that one is using the instrument.
This done, the instrument transforms itself into a celestial model The meridian plate corresponds with the celestial meridian, its diameter with the celestial axis, and the circular plate with the Equator. Now one takes the thread from the centre of the instrument and draws it out until it touches the wall on which the dial is to be drawn. The point where they meet will be the centre of the dial, there all the hour lines will meet, and there the gnomon will be placed. The hour lines could be drawn in several ways. In one the thread running from the centre is drawn out taut towards the wall across each of the hour lines marked on the circular plate in turn, and the point where it touches the wall marked. A straight line drawn from the centre of the dial previously determined and the point thus marked will be the hour line required.
Fig.6 Paradies' method of marking hour lines.
A second way of marking the hour lines (Fig. 6) depends on attaching a second cord or thread to the bottom end, of the diameter (f). This is then drawn up over the edge of the hour plate in a position corresponding with one of the hour lines (c) and then continued towards the wall so that it touches either the upper end of the diameter (b) or the first thread drawn out along it (j b d). The position where the thread meets the wall being marked, and this point joined to the centre (d), me resulting line will be the hour line equivalent to that over which the cord passed on the hour plate at (c). A third method was slightly more complex. A mirror was used so that the shadow of the diameter passed exactly over one of the hours on the circular plate. The position of the same shadow on the wall marked the position of the corresponding hour line. This projective method, Pardies noted, was particularly useful when the dial receiving surface was not perfectly flat and uniform.
From this account we get an idea of the basic way in which Pardies instrument was used. The pamphlet he wrote about it continues with instructions how to draw the signs of the zodiac, the azimuths and almucantars, the houses of the heaven, Italian, Babylonian and Jewish hours, and even reflex dials drawn inside a room. The whole purpose of the instrument was to allow complex operations to be mechanically performed. All calculation is negated, and Pardies preoccupation is simplicity. Often he notes, it is a nuisance to erect a scaffold of sufficient height and solidity to draw a dial in position. In this case set up your table at ground level, draw the dial on canvass, and afterwards transfer it to the higher position desired. If one mark of a gentleman was that he accomplished all that he undertook with ease and an effortless nonchalant dexterity, then this seems to have carried over to the instruments designed for his use. Mathematics was not a gentlemanly occupation. Deploying its effects without the trouble of calculation through the use of well-designed instruments, however, could be very acceptable especially if the instruments were finely crafted, in themselves objects for aesthetic appreciation.
Instrument-designers and instruments-makers quickly understood that commercial, social and intellectual success depended on responding to this market. For Ignace Pardies however dials also had a further pedagogic value. In 1666, having completed his noviciate in the Jesuit order he was appointed to teach physics and mathematics at the Jesuit college at La Rochelle. Dials offer a pleasant but effective teaching tool for imparting basic geometry and cosmology. Pardies' work in the subject followed on from that of his Jesuit colleague Athanasius Kircher, and from that of the Minim friar Emanuel Maignan. It was however the second machine described in his pamphlet, with which we are not concerned here, that related more directly to their optical methods. In the instrument described here, Pardies drew on his extensive theoretical knowledge to produce a device for gentlemanly convenience. In so doing, he deployed the same tactic as did Jesuit missionaries in the Far East, showing the superiority of their belief system over others by the superiority of their methods in areas which were not critical to faith. The dial-drawing device of Pardies was found useful. It was commended by Nicolas Bion in his general treatise on instruments of 1709:
this method of drawing dials is a very good one, particularly when a Surface is not flat and even, or when the Centre of the Diall falls at a great distance.
As the example by Thomas Haye shows it was produced by other makers. This was a situation that Pardies, by writing in the vernacular rather than in the Latin more customary for a Jesuit had probably hoped to bring about. The successful result subtly underlined Jesuit superiority.
And so this account of Pardies' instrument for drawing sundials brings us back to my starting point that the instruments whose fine craftsmanship has helped them to survive the centuries also open for us corridors of understanding of the world we have lost. Similar accounts could no doubt be given for many other instruments if only we could reconstruct them. Instruments, like all art objects, are not value-free. They belong to specific contexts and may have roles to play other than their overtly practical, technical or scientific one. It is from this multiplicity of functions between art and science, propaganda and practical use that derives the fascination of their study and their collection.
Note1. A lecture given at Sotheby's Olympia 28th October 2002 on the occasion of the dispersal of thirty nine instruments from the Time Museum (Rockford and Chicago). All illustrations ace courtesy of Sotheby's. The instruments mentioned in the text are described in full in Sotheby's catalogue Masterpieces from the Time Museum part three, Olympia London 30th October 2002.
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