Vintage silver plated sundial

Vintage silver plated sundial. Pendant with sundial in vintage look. The chain and pendant are silver plated and held by a narrow silver plated frame. The length of the chain is 55 cm.

Which is why a sundial often had sayings immortalized on the dial:

Mottoes and other inscriptions on sundials appeared very early. Most of them were already written in Latin. Some of them refer to the measurement of time, such as Horas non numero nisi serenas (literally: I do not count the hours unless they are serene). Moreover, also the "Do as the sundial does, count the serene hours only" saying. This is one of the most common sundial sayings today. Moreover, very general reflections about time and life are common. For example, the following one: Tempus fugit ("Time flees.") or Vita in motu ("Life is in motion.").

the reliability of the sundial:

The display of the time of day is the actual function of a sundial. However, compared to the commonly used mechanical and electronic clocks, the sundial goes quite "wrong". On the one hand, because the apparent movement of the sun is not uniform. Until the invention of the mechanical wheel clock at the end of the Middle Ages, this "error" had no meaning. One could accept without further ado that the true solar time deviated over the year. Namely, in comparison with the evenly running time in the summer half-year up to about ±5 minutes, in the winter half-year even up to about ±15 minutes. However, the general public had no knowledge of this. By the way, it would have been of no use either, because there was no better continuously measuring clock than the sundial. Accordingly, only astronomers had the knowledge of the uneven course of the sun. Thus they corrected the measured solar time (true solar time) with the so-called equation of time. At that time only Ptolemy knew the evenly passing time (mean solar time). Finally he could make his around observations more exactly interpretable.

If you want to know more about the sundial:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnenuhr

This sundial beige wide frame is for decoration only. It is NOT functional.