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Curiosities & Oddities

Tabletop Brass Orrery.

A six-inch brass sun, earth and moon on a turned wooden base: turn the small side crank and the little heavens move, geared true to the ratio of time.

$120.00

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About this product

Turn the small crank at its side and the earth walks around the sun while a sliver-thin moon keeps its own faster circuit. It is the old pleasure of holding the solar system in one hand, on a winter evening, with the lamp lit.

This tabletop orrery follows the classic tellurion pattern: sun, earth and moon only, the three bodies whose dance can be felt rather than merely diagrammed. It stands six inches high on a turned wooden base no wider than a dinner plate, and it is heavier than it looks. The gearing is cut brass, aged to a soft amber patina rather than left mirror-bright and geared true to the ratio of time if not of distance, and the base is stamped with the simple ratios it keeps. A small workshop fits and files each gear train by hand.

The instrument takes its name from Charles Boyle, the Fourth Earl of Orrery, for whom an early model was built in the 1700s. Such pieces were kept in a study or a cabinet of curiosities, beside fossils and shells.

Details

  • Sun, earth and moon in cut brass with an amber patina
  • Six inches high, on a turned wooden base
  • Side crank; base stamped with the gear ratios

How to use

Wind it slowly and watch the moon outrun the earth, and the earth outrun nothing at all.

A gift for the desk of someone who likes their instruments to still move.

$120.00