Lot 167

Paul Reinmann, Nuremberg, 137 x 84 x 15 mm, circa 1590
A large, portable folding astronomical equatorial sundial, made of ivory with polychrome mountings
Case: ivory, brass, firegilt, signed Paulus Reinmann Feciebat, marked with "crown" "R". The back is elaborately engraved with a scene of the crucifixion.
The name Reinmann applies to a number of 16th century masters who were all members of the same family. The most important of them was Paul Reinmann (died in 1609), who was born circa 1557, a son of instrument maker Hieronymus Reinmann. Like his father, Paul Reimann lived and worked in Nuremberg. Hieronymus Reinmann had already taken the magnetic declination into account when he built his compasses, which meant that the Nuremberg makers played an important part in the distribution of this deviation, which had been discovered decades earlier by Georg Hartmann. Paul Reinmann made ivory sundials like his father but he was one of the few compass makers in Nuremberg who also worked with other materials. His excellent skills and the mathematical knowledge he used to create his instruments made him one of the best makers of his time. This persuaded Professor Jakob Christmann in Heidelberg to recommend Reinmann and his work in the Observatorium solarium libri tres, in quibus explicatur versus motus Solis in sodiaca et universa doctrina triangulorum ad rationes apparentius coelestium accomdatur, Basel 1601.
Source: Wissenschaftliche Instrumente in ihrer Zeit,Vol. I., by Ralf Kern, published by Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne 2010

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