I thought it was great when you volunteered to cut the stone in my studio at
the conference! Alas, I don't think anybody took your picture. I think when
people saw you make a sucessful stone engraving on your first try it
inspired some of them to try their hands at carving.
I loved having a go at your workshop, and have since been all revved up to try my hand at it at home, once I find the time---oh, about next February. It was so much fun. You were really so generous and trusting to let me near your stone with a sharp tool! [and if anyone did get a picture of my hands-on experience, I'd love to have a copy.]
As for your new tabletop analemmatic, I have to say it was gorgeous. Personally, I like the chess piece gnomon better than one attached by some mechanism. One risks losing it, but there is a sweetness about the chess piece design and different feeling of interacting with the dial.
Hey a quick question I've been carrying around since you gave your wonderful
talk on travelers of old who used portable sundials.
All those beautiful antique pocket dials for travelers now cost thousands of
dollars in auction. But back then, in the old days, how expensive were
they? How many days would the average worker have to work to be able to buy
one? Could only the rich afford them?
This is a difficult question to answer in brief as the rates varied from place to place and over time. The short answer, which I gauge from surviving sundials, is that sundials were made to match peoples' pocketbooks. When rich and poor had the same kinds of dials, the quality of material and workmanship varied. For instance, a pillar dial for an aristocrat was typically made of gilt brass and silver; one for a merchant or priest might be of ivory; one for a student or tradesmen might be of printed paper on wood; that for a shepherd, of incised wood or bone. Moreover, although the rich had access to every kind of dial, they shunned some types that were favored by the poor or middling sort.
For more examples, please see my article, ìThe Material Culture of Astronomy in Daily Life,îJournal for the History of Astronomy 32 (2001): 189-222.
All the best,
Sara
