Accession No

6845

Brief Description

horary quadrant and lunar volvelle, fake

Origin

Maker

Class

dials

Earliest Date

Latest Date

Inscription Date

Material

metal (brass)

Dimensions

155mm (width), 155mm (depth), 11mm (height)

Special Collection

Provenance

Purchased from Tesseract July 2025. Purchased by a private individual c. 2000.

Inscription

Januarius
Februarius
Martius
Aprilis
Maius
Iunius
Iulius
Augustus
September
October
November
December [obverse, around the outside of dial]

Aries
Taurus
Gemini
Cancer
Leo
Virgo
Libra]Scorpio
Sagitarius
Capricornus
Aquarius
Pisces [obverse, around outside of dial]

El.Poli.51gr.
Umbra Versa
Umbra Recta [reverse]

Description Notes

Horary quadrant, fake.

Square brass plate. Obverse features two circular rotating volvelles, each with a pointer. Going from the centre, the smaller of the two volvelles has a central pin, which attaches both it and the larger volvelle to the base plate. It has a circular hole, through which the user can view the engravings on the lower volvelle, as the volvelles are rotated. The smaller volvelle is marked around its outside with two 1-12 scales, marked at every 1 and further subdivided into quarters. The pointer extrudes from the disc at the opposite side to that with the viewing hole. The larger volvelle is marked with two scales, the inner being another 2x 1-12 scale, and the outer being a 1-29 scale. The pointer for this one is more elaborate, and extrudes around 25mm out from the disc.

The base plate itself is richly decorated, and is engraved with various scales in concentric circles of increasing size. Moving from the centre towards the outer rim, the first circle is made up of illustrated signs of the zodiac, with zodiac symbols to label them. Next is the scale for the zodiac calendar, with each zodiac sign divided into 30, labelled at every 10. Beyond this are the names of the zodiac. The outer circle is a standard calendar, marked with the months of the year and the days, which are marked at 10, 20, and the final day of the given month (i.e. 28, 30 or 31). The scale is subdivided into each day.

In the corners of the square plate, in the gap created by the edge of the final circular scale, there are four decorative elements engraved. Each depicts the head of a horned figure blowing wind out of his mouth.

The reverse is marked with an horary quadrant, with a 0-90˚ scale along the curved edge. There are two 0-100 scales on two of the plate edges, and a zodiac legend on another. The words El Poli 51gr are engraved on the final edge.

References

Events