Accession No

5617

Brief Description

11-inch manuscript celestial globe, Edo period, Japanese, 1784

Origin

Japan

Maker

Class

astronomy

Earliest Date

1784

Latest Date

1784

Inscription Date

1784

Material

wood; paper; plaster (possibly gofun); metal (steel, iron, gold flake, others); ink

Dimensions

diameter of globe 280mm; stand width and depth 460mm, total height 395mm

Special Collection

Provenance

Purchased from Christie’s, 8 Kings Street, St James, London, England, on 16/06/1999. Lot 99 from Japanese Art and Design Catalogue.

Inscription

inscribed near the south pole
Tenmei yonen saiji kinoetatsu gogatsu

Description Notes

11-inch Japanese manuscript celestial globe, Edo period, 1784. Plaster sphere with wooden stand.

Plaster sphere on a wooden stand with a cross shaped base, five supporting uprights and a horizontal circle. Also just over a semi-circular metal vertical support. All markings have been applied in ink in manuscript directly onto the plaster surface. The milky way is depicted with flakes of gold leaf.

The globe shows the celestial equator in red, the plane of the ecliptic in yellow (with small holes roughly every 2mm along it) and stars arranged in constellations with its name, in black, red, green and yellow ink, the milky way is covered by a wash of gold leaf, two single line latitudinal circles drawn in black on the sphere to indicate the circle of perpetual visibility ( in the north polar region) and the circle of perpetual invisibility (in the south polar region); the globe also divided longitudinally in black into a number of lunar lodges or mansions of varying width, inscribed near the south pole Tenmei yonen saiji kinoetatsu gogatsu (The fifth month of the forth year of Tenmei (1784)).

A long Chinese inscription near the south pole lists three historic Chinese computations of the number of stars constellations. The red dots indicate a Wei-dynasty computation of 810 stars in 138 constellations, the yellow dots a Shang-dynasty computation of 144 stars in 44 constellations and the black dots a Qi-dynasty computation of 511 stars in 118 constellations, a total of 1,465 stars in 300 constellation to which the maker of the present globe added his own computation, in green dots of 308 stars in 61 constellations. A further inscription explains that a combination of one black, one yellow and one red circle has been used to mark those stars which were visible in ancient times but can now no longer be seen.

The vertical wooden circle of the stand has 24 equally spaced Chinese characters on its upper side.

References

Katie Taylor; 'The Japanese star globe and historical astronomy'; Explore Whipple Collections online article; Whipple Museum of the History of Science; University of Cambridge; 2009: https://www.whipplemuseum.cam.ac.uk/explore-whipple-collections/globes/japanese-star-globe

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