Sundial Compass
A brass looking sundial compass, that used to belong to an aunt I never met (she passed around 1983). It is clearly worn and a bit dusty, but the cover was on snugly for most of the past 40 years so it has not seen much light or wear in that time. The numerals on the sundial appear to be extremely lightly stamped into place and still legible and clean to read, with minimal embroidery. The more ornate backing for the compass appears to be paper. The needle may need re-magnetizing, it spins freely but doesn't appear to hold direction well. The "hand" for the sundial freely moves to the standing position, with springs or similar binding it in place standing or laying down without issue. The paper backing does have a signature on it, but it's old and clipped so while it may be _W. London_, I'm not convinced. No markings on the back, sides, top of the lid, or inside the lid.
3" wide and 7/16" tall, without the lid.
Inherited
Yes
Hi Tim,
Thank you for contacting Mearto with your appraisal inquiry.
I've finally heard back from someone who is a member of the British Sundial Society, who said this was an inexpensive (at the time) pocket sundial form the early 20th Century; he said the form is pretty ubiquitous and that if the maker was noteworthy they would have made sure their name was more prominently displayed.
He isn't an appraiser per se but was able to steer me to some recent relevant if obscure auction results that suggest a fair market value of between $125 and $175. He said there are a LOT of modern aged fakes and replicas, mostly made in India, of these kinds of little instruments...but he thought this looked authentic.
He also said "such small portable sundials *always* are mounted with a compass since the user needs to orient it correctly to show the current solar time (different by up to 16 minutes from clock time, thus requiring “equation of time” tables.). They would not have been marketed or described as a compass, since the compass is part of the time-telling instrument.
I appreciate the additional time I had with this. Please let us know if you have additional items to appraise, or questions/concerns, and thank you again for using Mearto.
Have a great weekend!
~ Delia
Thanks, Tom, for the additional photos. Between shadows and the dial, I'm still not seeing any text that might indicate who or where this was made - if you can see something to that effect can you comment here? Otherwise, I'll appraise as an unattributed 19th Century sundial compass.
Thanks,
Delia
There are almost no markings on it- almost! Inside the compass, on the very rim of the paper, is a half occluded mark. If I didn't know "W. London" was a maker of sundial compasses, I would not be able to read it.
I've added one photo showing the placement, and I have a video available here going over the device in detail: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fdbM3dG1JQpX6WEP_f-ZBzOgoHspzCD4/view?usp=sharing
Note - the occluded makers mark appears to be on the paper insert, and it appears to have the top half cut off- so you can only see the bottom half (or less) of the letters. I try as I might to show it in the provided video, but it's at least as hard to see and interpret in person as it is in the video.
I haven't seen anything like this in other antique listings, which means it must be rare and valuable! I kid, I kid. It may very well be rare because it's a bunch of spare pieces thrown together- Notice that where top sundial part, where the two sections are cut out to expose the compass, do not have the same radius for the cut- the radius of the inner rim between 12 and 1 is noticably slanted and done by hand.
Thank you for continuing to work with me as I try to place this old piece of brass.
The internet seems to think "W. London" is a location, not a maker. The "W." our front looks realistic, and after some guesswork an LLM came up with "W. Thorne", but the letters still don't look quite perfect for that either.
Really not sure what it says!
Tim,
Thanks for your note and video(!) - a bit hard to see but it gives me a good sense of what we're up against here. I admit I'm at a bit of a loss on this - while there are some similarities to other compasses/sundials I've found, the similarities are so basic as to be utterly irrelevant in making an attribution (it would like saying because a chair has four legs, a seat and a back it must have been made by a known chairmaker who also made chairs with four legs, a seat and a back).
Would it be OK if I showed these photos and this video to a few other more specialized appraisers in my field (not part of the Mearto team) top see if they can come up with any ideas as to maker, age and/or area of manufacture? It won't cost anything additional for the outside expertise but could extend the time it takes me/us to work this out?
Let me know if that's OK...thanks, Delia
Please do pass it along! Thank you for putting in the time, I really can't tell what that inscription is either.
I have added more detail shots- the inner paper is hard to get a good view of. Let me know if more pictures are warranted!