Lot n° 40
Estimation :
200 - 300
EUR
Chinese EQUINOXIAL DIAL made of lacquered wood, painted red - Lot 40
Chinese EQUINOXIAL DIAL made of lacquered wood, painted red and black, signed 胡茹易 Hu Ruyi, undated [19th century].
A tiered base with a hinged hour plate mounted in the center. In the center is a fold-down brass gnomon surrounded by scales for:
1. instructions for orienting the instrument toward the north
2. the twelve so-called “earthly” branches corresponding to the twelve Chinese “double hours”
3. the twelve Chinese double hours divided into two halves (above and below)
4. the twenty-four European hours divided into fifteen-minute intervals.
The hour plate is positioned by an arm placed in one of the thirteen notches carved into the base plate, representing the jieqi (the solar terms of the Chinese lunisolar calendar).
At the other end of the plate is a compass surrounded by three circles representing the eight trigrams (bagua); the four cardinal directions; and the twenty-four traditional celestial and terrestrial directions.
11.4 x 5.3 x 1.7 cm.
A typical example of portable dials made in Xin’an (新安), in the south of present-day Anhui Province (安徽). No other examples by Hu Ruyi are cataloged, but his family’s descendants still work as compass makers today. A similar dial is preserved at the Whipple Museum of the History of Science in Cambridge.
The inclusion of the European twenty-four-hour system is uncommon.
Expert: Anthony TURNER
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