CHAPTER XVII

SUNDIALS, CLOCKS, AND BRASS INSTRUMENTS

The mystery of dialling--Some old dials--Antique clocks--Old watches--The weather--Scientific instruments.

The modern man can scarcely realize what it must have been in this England of ours when clouds obscured the sun, and thick mists drew a veil over the shadow cast by the gnomon, before clocks were known. The time of day was of less importance when the sundial on the church tower, or on a pillar erected at some convenient place, had to be consulted, when the sun shone it is true, but even then many must have inwardly fretted and rebelled against the uncertainty. Reader, have you ever spent a day away from public clocks in the country when the sky was overcast _without a watch in your pocket_? If not, do it now, and the result will be startling. It will create a sympathetic touch with the past, and bring vividly to mind the trials of patience which had to be endured when under such conditions inscriptions on dials were read, but no clear line marked the onward march of Sol.

The Mystery of Dialling.

Dialling is a science which few except experts understand now; the antiquary takes little note of it as he gazes upon the old dial plate and makes out the inscription upon it. The collector gladly buys the brass dial with its quaint lettering and division marks without even knowing where it came from, or what kind of stone column or pillar it originally capped. Yet there is far more interest in an old sundial installed in a modern garden amidst reconstructed old-world surroundings when the origin of the relic is known.

We have no record of the type of sundial referred to in Isaiah xxxviii, 8: "Behold, I will bring again the shadow of the degrees which is gone down on the _sun-dial_ of Ahaz, ten degrees backward." There are, however, records of the sundial of the Chaldean astronomer Perosus, who lived about 340 B.C. It consisted of a hollow hemisphere placed with its rim horizontal, having a head or globule fixed so that as long as the sun shone above the horizon the shadow of the head fell on the inside of the hemisphere.

In more recent days the making and fixing of the dial with its gnomon was carried out on fixed principles, and there is now no difficulty about such an installation provided that the same astronomical conditions are observed. (For rules governing dialling, see Glossary.)

Some Old Dials.

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.

There is no intermediate stage between the general use of clocks and watches and sundials, for their use overlaps. We have but to look at many an old church tower on which is to be seen the dial still operative--for sun and gnomon fail not--and the clock which has told the time for many years. Both were probably working before pocket clocks or watches became general and timepieces were to be found on the mantelpiece or sideboard.

Brass was used from the commencement of clockmaking for wheels and dials; and wonderfully, too, the early clockmakers cut and carved the metal into the required form and gauged the works with accuracy. Some may be familiar with that wonderful astronomical clock in Wimborne Minster, made in 1220 by Peter Lightfoot, a monk of Glastonbury, who also constructed a clock for Wells Cathedral. In it, according to the early belief that the sun, moon, and stars revolved round the earth, the sun travels its appointed circuit every twenty-four hours, and by its position marks the time.

In the evolution of the clock there have been many marked stages. The clock when first devised was a great stride from the sundial, the beautiful plates of which have already been described. Progress followed, and in a century or two clocks with wheels and complicated mechanism, which when once set going and wound up periodically told the time with exactitude, enabled the populace to know the time of day even when the sun was not shining. That was the age of decorative art, and many of the brass plates and dials were magnificent in their engravings, glorious in their beautiful old fretwork, and rich in brass cherubims and emblems of Old Father Time. Moving figures were in the early days regarded as ideal attractions in clocks. The two old figures which strike the hour and go through some quaint evolutions over the clock which for many years has been a great attraction in Cheapside, are typical of the figures which in miniature might have been seen playing on brass gongs and chiming bells in many towns in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They were in abundance in Norwich and towns in the eastern counties, seeming to reflect the old Flemish cities on the Continent, where they are even now fairly common. Collectors are very enthusiastic in their search for genuine "Cromwell" or lantern clocks. A few years ago they might have been found discarded on the old metal rubbish-heaps of the clockmaker. To-day these clocks, all brass in their construction, are polished bright, set going once more, and treated with care; good specimens changing hands for sums varying from eight to fifteen pounds. Originally they were usually placed on a bracket, over which was often a wooden hood to protect the clock. Then came a hinged glass door, and in that we have the origin of the "grandfather" with enlarged dial and rich oak or mahogany case reaching down to the ground.

Those who wish to study the beautiful dials and engraved faces of clocks and watches in order that they may realize the difference in the products of makers during the last few centuries, should visit the splendid collection in the Guildhall Museum, loaned by the Clockmakers' Company. The work of the old clockmakers was that of the very best. It was made to last, and the metal they chose for their operations appears to have been very suitable for the purpose. In evidence of the lasting quality of old brass works, a well-known writer has put forward the interesting story of a chamber clock presented by Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn on their wedding day. It found its way into the Strawberry Hill collection of Horace Walpole, and at the famous sale of those interesting curios and souvenirs of great persons that noted minister had gathered together, it was purchased for £100 by the late Queen Victoria. Harrison Ainsworth says: "This token of endless affection remains the same after three centuries; but four years after it was given, the object of Henry's eternal love was sacrificed on the scaffold. The clock still goes, but surely it should have been stopped for ever when Anne Boleyn died!"

The advent of table clocks came with the discovery of the use of a mainspring by the Nuremberg clockmakers in the sixteenth century. In the British Museum there is a clock in the form of a ship made for the Emperor Rudolph II in 1581. There are many other fine examples of curiously designed clocks, including a water clock by Finchet, of Cheapside, and a French astronomical clock with astrolabe, and others with automatic figures on view there, as well as very remarkable types in the collection of clock dials and watches given to the Museum by the late Mr. Octavius Morgan.

The early clocks, the dials of which were of brass, had only one finger, for the minute-hand was not known until 1670, and the second finger a much later invention.

In Fig. 85 is a typical example of a brass engraved watch clock face and dial, which has a perforated hinged cover and is exceptionally well engraved.

Old Watches.

Watches were costly in the days when so much time was expended on their manufacture. Those were the days of good workmanship in which watchmakers excelled. They put much labour into the ornamentation of the works, "watch-clocks," and dial plates, so many of which were beautifully engraved, tooled with great skill, and cleverly perforated. The dials were in early days unprotected, hence the need of a case, often of brass, and when made of some other material were frequently ornamented with brass inlay. It was not until the middle of the seventeenth century that glass or crystal covers were invented; that was about the time, too, when the enamelling of dials came into vogue.

The pocket watch brought with it fobs, chains, and watch-keys or winders, mostly of brass, which should not be overlooked. In a representative collection there are crank keys similar to large clock winders, but, of course, made in miniature. Then after various developments brass and Pinchbeck fob keys came into vogue, and later still ornamental keys with and without the addition of stones, the majority being made in brass. A number of these little objects can still be collected quite cheaply, and nicely mounted make a very interesting addition to the more ornamental side of brass metal-work.

Forecasting the Weather.

The weather has found men a subject for discussion and given them opportunities of speaking a pleasant word of comradeship when meeting in the country or in town. To comment upon its fickleness has become as common a mode of salutation as passing the time of day. The topic is an ancient one and the interest in it has been sustained, for to gauge the coming changes has taken the attention of men from the earliest times. To study the fleeting cloud, to note the coming storm by the direction of the wind, or to notice the damp in the air as the mist rises and is wafted over the fields, has always been a favourite occupation. It was so before the day of barometers and scientific instruments, and it is equally so by those who prefer the pronouncement of the weather prophet rather than the barometer gauge. Galileo is said to have invented the thermometer, but it was his pupil Torricelli, who discovered the barometer. His townsmen in Faenza, in the north of Italy, some years ago erected a monument to his memory, putting up the biggest barometer known. In common with other scientific instruments the barometer has afforded opportunities to the worker in metal and to the art designer, for like the clock case it has been made a thing of beauty as well as one of use. The very remarkable barometer illustrated in Fig. 86 is an elaborate work of the brassfounder and exceedingly ornate. It is a very exceptional piece, but there are other barometers of considerable beauty in the hands of collectors of old bronze and metal-work.

Some of the old scientific instruments are very clumsy looking when compared with modern workmanship. About them it is true there is a quaint beauty and a silent tribute to the skill and ingenuity of early inventors, those who were but groping, perhaps blindly, in the initial stages of an undeveloped science. Scientists always take a delight in the instruments which their predecessors have used, and when they realize by comparison the difficulties the early pioneers had to contend with on account of the inefficient instruments in their possession they wonder at the advance that particular science made in their day.

In Fig. 84 we illustrate a curious old microscope and case, made about the year 1780. It is on a mahogany stand, in which is a drawer containing four magnifying powers. It formerly belonged to a Mr. Charles Sherborne and is now in the Hull Museum, where, as the connecting link between the older type and the modern, there is another interesting microscope made some fifty or sixty years ago. The engineer, mechanic, and scientist find much pleasure in the curios which were associated with their professions in former days, and delight in the possession of "old brass" which seems to bring them nearer to the great men who years ago laid the foundations on which present-day advance has been built.

Engineers have been very skilful in creating models of engines and machinery with which they have been familiar, and in reproducing in miniature replicas of noted engines which have been used for practical purposes. These little models, some of which were made more than a hundred years ago, in days when steam power was but in its infancy, have been very valuable to engineers to-day, in that they provide them with actual models of old-time engines, the details of construction of which might otherwise have been lost. In one of the museums at South Kensington there are many of these scientific and mechanical models in brass, some of them working on the penny-in-the-slot principle, so that visitors can by the expenditure of a few coppers set in motion any machine they are interested in, and so judge of the actual effects of old-time inventions as illustrated by models which have been made to scale.

In addition to working models of large objects there are some remarkably small models which are stored and treasured by collectors. Some are so small and minute, although perfect in every detail, that it is difficult to understand how the worker in brass even if he had been a jeweller and accustomed to fashion the settings of small stones could so accurately have produced such tiny machines. It is said that the smallest engine in the world, a beautiful piece of metal-work, owned by an American collector, stands on a ten-cent piece! Yet remarkable as it may seem, when connected with an electric power cable of very small calibre the engine starts off as if it were a full-size horizontal engine. The chief materials used in the construction are copper and brass, although the band of the fly-wheel is of solid gold. So small is this little engine that its measurements are all taken in sixty-fourths of an inch. Thus the diameter of the fly-wheel, practically the largest piece of mechanism in the construction of the engine, is 28/64 in., and the fly-wheel band only 7/64 in. The valve rod is only 1/64 in., and the outside diameter of the cylinder 12/64 in.; completed, standing on the small coin referred to, the engine weighs 3 dwt., a truly remarkable work of metallic art.

XVIII

ENAMELS ON COPPER