Spring, 1998
MUSEUM curators are occasionally offered advice by visitors, often for the improvement of their labels, and usually concerning spelling mistakes that they have allowed to go uncorrected. More valuable suggestions are also sometimes received. One such suggestion has recently been made by Dr Gregory Hutchinson of Exeter College, who has contributed significantly to the Museum’s understanding of one of its sundials: an Italian pocket horizontal dial of 1799, constructed in wood and tortoiseshell for a latitude of 43 degrees. The current label for the sundial gives a rather puzzled description of a scene which appears on the top of the lid of the dial: “The design pressed on the lid of the box shows a man sitting and a woman reclining under a tree; the man is writing on the trunk of the tree, and has already written the word ‘Angelica’ or ‘Angelicus'”.
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