The British Sundial Society

Promoting the Art and Science of Gnomonics since 1989

Update: BSS Zoom Event – 17 April 2021

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A reminder that the BSS is hosting its first Zoom event on 17 April 2021 starting at 17:00 BST which equates to:

• 09:00 PDT – West Coast of North America
• 12:00 EDT – East Coast of North America
• 16:00 UTC – Coordinated Universal Time (roughly GMT)
• 17:00 BST/IST – UK and RoI
• 18:00 CEST – Central Europe

The speakers will be:

Frank King – Welcome and Introduction
Roger Bailey – A Sundial Tour in the French Alps, featuring the historic sundials of G F Zarbula and the modern dials of Remi Potey
Woody Sullivan – Title tbc
Fred Sawyer – Hybrid Peaucellier Sundials – Dial Designs You’ve Never Seen Before

Questions submitted during the talks will be put to the speakers at the end and we expect the whole event to last about 90 minutes.

Registration

If you would like to attend, please email conf2021@sundialsoc.org.uk.
The event is free and open to anyone worldwide; please tell your friends!

Four Dials by Tim Chalk

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Tim Chalk submitted details of four dials to the 2020 BSS Sundial Design And Restoration Awards
well before the end of the competition but due to an oversight they were not added to the list of entries or the web site at the time. Apologies to Tim for the omission and we encourage visitors to look at them. They have also been added to the full list of entries below.
The four dials are:


Read on for more details of each of these dials.

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Update: The 2016-2020 Award Scheme – summary of entries

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Update Mar 7, 2021. We regret that, due to an oversight, four submissions from Tim Chalk were not published previously or included in the following summary. This has now been remedied and we apologise for the delay.


This, the sixth scheme, has had a record number of entries, boosted in part by time available due to the COVID-19 lockdown. Visitors to the website are encouraged to submit comments on any or all of the sundials, using the reply box at the bottom of each page, on aspects such as design, craftsmanship and overall function of the dial. These comments will help the Trustees to choose the entries for particular Awards.

In summary, we have a large ‘monumental’ dial in Malaysia; a restoration of very old polyhedral dial; a ‘first venture’ to commemorate a ruby wedding; the restoration of a stained glass window dial; a number of dials (conventional and unconventional) by experts in Cambridge; an obelisk for a garden in Cornwall; a novel altitude dial linked to human activities rather than just the hours, and a number of precision dials of different types cut in slate.

1. David Brown – The Re-birth of a Large Polyhedral Sundial
2. The Cardozo Kindersley Workshop, Cambridge – An Islamic-Inspired Horizontal Sundial in Jeddah
3. The Cardozo Kindersley Workshop, Cambridge – A Portable Stereographic Sundial on the End-Flap of a Book
4. The Cardozo Kindersley Workshop, Cambridge – A Horizontal Garden Sundial in Rutland
5. Tim Chalk – Dollar Academy Sundial
6. Tim Chalk – Gleneagles House Sundial
7. Tim Chalk – “A Year In The Life Of The Manx Shearwater” Sculptural Sundial
8. Tim Chalk – Crieff Hydro Sundial
9. The Didsbury Parsonage Trust – The Replacement Stained Glass Sundial in Didsbury, Manchester
10. David Hawker – A Ruby Wedding Vertical Sundial in Sutton, Surrey
11. Inscriptorum of Sundborn, Sweden – A Vertical Wall Sundial in South Cambridgeshire
12. Martin Jenkins – The Battle of Britain 80th Anniversary Sundial
13. Martin Jenkins – Janet’s Dial
14. Martin Jenkins –The Rotating Polar Mean Time Dial
15. Martin Jenkins – The Socrates Plato Dial
16. Martin Jenkins – The Zodiac Horizontal Mean Time Dial
17. Syed Kamarulzaman – Ta Ha Sundial, Sepang, Malaysia
18. Frank King – A Portable Stereographic Face Mask Sundial
19. Tool/Toy Project – The Circadian Yardstick
20. The Voss Obelisk – A Pair of Declining Reclining Slate Dials in Cornwall

Five Dials by Martin Jenkins

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Martin Jenkins has clearly made excellent use of his time in 2020 and has, just ahead of the deadline, submitted details of five dials to the 2020 BSS Sundial Design And Restoration Awards

Battle of Britain – 80th Anniversary

Because of my interest in flying and 2020 being the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, I decided to design and make a west facing dial to commemorate the event. The dial is slate, 600mm by 480mm x 20 mm thickness. The knowing of time is a very important aspect in flight whether for navigation, fuel management, or coordination between air traffic.

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The Circadian Yardstick

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An unusual submission to the 2020 BSS Sundial Design And Restoration Awards from the team at Tool/Toy Project.

This is the Circadian Yardstick, part of a collection of instruments made by Tool/Toy Project in 2019 for the Oslo Architecture Triennale. The collection consists of a set of objects designed to slow down the daily domestic routine by encouraging regular playful interactions with the Sun in the home. The devices engage the senses, encouraging various ways to listen, touch, watch, meditate, navigate and dance with the sunshine and its effects. 

The Circadian Yardstick works by measuring the length of the shadow of a pin (gnomon), which in turn indicates what our bodies are doing according to our circadian rhythms at various times of the day – from peak alertness to an enhanced sense of smell. By intellectually connecting our internal cycles to those of the Sun, the yardstick encourages the user to live in harmony with both.
Read on for full description and more pictures.

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2021 Solar Data Card

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I’m sorry to say that the 2021 Solar Data Card included with the December Bulletin contained a number of inaccuracies, all due to an oversight by me and in no way reflecting on the accuracy of the information kindly provided by Fiona Vincent. Apologies to her and to members for the mistake. A corrected version will be included with the March Bulletin and is provided here as a PDF which can be printed on a single sheet of A4 and folded to provide a two-sided A5 “card”.