Chats on Old Copper and BrassBurgess, Fred. W. (Frederick William)
History
Chats on Old Copper and Brass
Burgess, Fred. W. (Frederick William)
Brasses; Brasswork; Copper; Copperwork; Metal-work -- Collectors and collecting
The pattern known as the garden dial is that commonly met with (for the
large dials once fixed on church towers and in public places rarely
come into the market); and the old dial plates seen in curio-shops
have come from such pillars. Charles Dickens had a fine old sundial
in his garden at Gad's Hill Place, and it has often been copied. The
globe dial, set on suitable pillars, has been made frequently for
modern antique gardens. An enterprising maker of dials purchased the
beautiful balustrades of old Kew Bridge when it was removed a few
years ago, and capping them with replicas of old dials--in some cases
with genuine antiques--produced excellent examples of the old type of
garden sundial. Similar dials, more imposing in size, are met with in
curious and yet very suitable places by motorists, cyclists, and others
when touring in the country. A charming Elizabethan relic is the stone
bridge across the River Wye in the village of Wilton, near Ross. On the
north wall of the parapet is a stone pillar surmounted by a sundial
having four faces--an interesting landmark and often admired; and when
the sun shines on it the traveller invariably pulls out his watch and
compares it with the shadow of the gnomon. There were once many famous
dials _in situ_ in London; most of them are gone; there are some,
however, readily seen, like the noted pillar dial in the Temple and
that on the front of one of the old buildings in Lincoln's Inn.
Of other forms of dials, the eccentricities of the horologists they
might be called, there are the "goblet" dials in the form of a cup,
the hour-lines being engraved on the interior; pillar dials which are
cylinders with movable gnomons; the quadrant, in the use of which the
altitude of the sun is taken through pierced sights, the time being
shown on curved hour-lines by means of a plumb-line hanging from the
angle; and the ring dials, which were very popular in England down to
the year 1800. In Fig. 83 are shown earlier dials of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. On the left there is an armillary dial by F.
Culpeper, of London. In the middle there is a pillar dial dated 1567,
and on the right of the figure a ring dial made by Humphrey Cole in
1575, all three important types. Perhaps one of the chief delights
of the study of sundial plates is to read and make out the different
mottoes and legends on them--most of them relating to the flight of
time, some alluding to man's duties which, when neglected, can never be
made up, for "Time and tide wait for no man."
Another type of dial is the portable one, in which form dials or pocket
clocks, as they were sometimes called, can be collected--and they are
generally of brass, some being very decorative.
Antique Clocks.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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