Dials and prices
Choose by the wall or the garden first. The material comes second.
Every dial here is calculated for one place, so begin with where it will stand: a level garden, a wall and the way it faces, or a stretch of paving. Then choose slate, cut in five to six weeks, or bronze, poured once a month and finished in ten to fourteen. Nothing is made for stock and there is no minimum order.
Every kind of dial, pricedThe ledger · all prices in Australian dollars
Every Kind of Dial, Priced
Showing all 11 kinds of dial
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Slate wall dial
For a wall within a few degrees of true north. Dense blue-grey slate with the hour lines and IIII numerals engraved for your latitude.
300 mm square 5-6 weeks From AUD$680 -
Declining wall dial, slate
For a wall that does not face true north, calculated from its measured bearing so the hours fall where the sun puts them.
To suit the wall 5-6 weeks From AUD$1,900 -
Declining wall dial, bronze
The same calculation for an off-north wall, cast in silicon bronze and engraved, then given its patina.
To suit the wall 10-14 weeks From AUD$3,800 -
Horizontal garden dial
Level on a pedestal or a low wall, its gnomon leaning at your latitude. The size most often chosen for a courtyard or a memorial bed.
250 mm 10-14 weeks AUD$1,450 -
Horizontal garden dial, large
Room for half and quarter hours and a motto round the chapter ring. Reads comfortably from the garden path.
400 mm 10-14 weeks AUD$2,600 -
Equatorial dial
A plate tilted parallel to the equator with the hours spaced evenly, both faces engraved because the southern sun lights each in turn.
To order 10-14 weeks Per siteQuoted -
Armillary sphere
Bronze rings for the equator and meridian round an arrow on the polar axis. The price follows the ring count and the engraving.
600 mm 10-14 weeks AUD$5,200-7,400 -
Analemmatic ground dial
Hour stones on an ellipse and a date scale set into paving. A person stands on the date and becomes the gnomon. Installation is priced on top.
Sized to the paving Planned with the site From AUD$6,500 -
Noon mark
A brass line set into a stone floor, step or terrace, marking the moment the sun crosses your own meridian.
Floor or step Planned with the site Per siteQuoted -
Sandstone pedestal
Tasmanian sandstone at reading height for a garden dial, drilled for the stainless pins that hold the dial on true north.
900 mm tall Cut with the dial AUD$950 -
Restoration and new gnomons
A $90 assessment, then a new gnomon, recut numerals or re-setting a dial that has moved from the place it was made for.
Any old dial After assessment Typical AUD$350-1,200
Lead times count from the approved setting-out drawing. Bronze is poured once a month, on the first Thursday, so a drawing approved the week after a pour waits for the next one.
How buying works
Deposit, Fitting and Freight
Paid when you approve the setting-out drawing. The balance falls due before dispatch or installation.
Within 60 km of Hobart on any order over $1,400, which covers every bronze garden dial.
Beyond the first 60 km, on the one regional trip the workshop makes each month.
Freight quoted at the drawing stage. Every dial travels with setting instructions and a printed alignment card.
Bronze · poured on the first Thursday
Garden Dials
A garden dial lies level on a pedestal or a low wall, and its gnomon leans at the latitude of that garden: 42°53′ in Hobart, 41°26′ in Launceston, 27°28′ in Brisbane.
The hour lines on a horizontal dial are not evenly spaced. They crowd together either side of noon and open out towards six, and the spread depends on the sine of the latitude, so the same lines cut for Brisbane would be visibly wrong beside a Hobart dial. The drawing alongside is the set-out for 42°53′ south, with the shadow turning anticlockwise from VI in the morning to VI at night.
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Horizontal garden dial, 250 mm
$1,450
Cast in silicon bronze and engraved for your latitude. Sits on a pedestal or a flat stone, and suits a courtyard or a memorial bed.
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Horizontal garden dial, 400 mm
$2,600
Large enough for half and quarter hours and a motto round the chapter ring, and to be read from the path rather than over it.
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Equatorial dial
Quoted per site
The plate is tilted parallel to the equator, so the hours sit an even 15° apart. In the south the upper face carries the shadow from the September equinox to the March one and the lower face through winter, so both are engraved.
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Armillary sphere, 600 mm
$5,200-7,400
Bronze rings for the equator and the meridian, with an arrow along the polar axis as the gnomon, pointing at the south celestial pole. The price moves with the number of rings and how much of them carries engraving.
Bronze dials take 10 to 14 weeks from the approved drawing, because the workshop pours once a month. Within 60 km of Hobart the installation is included, set out on true north rather than on a compass reading.
Slate and bronze · read on the wall
Wall Dials
A wall dial is calculated for the bearing of one wall. Walls that face exactly true north are rarer than most people expect.
On a wall that faces true north the dial is a vertical plate with the noon line plumb down the middle, and the style stands off the wall at 47°07′, the complement of Hobart's latitude. Slate suits it well. It takes a fine engraved line, it reads dark against a pale wall, and it is cut and lettered in five to six weeks.
Turn the wall even a few degrees from north and the arithmetic changes. The noon line stays plumb, but the style swings off to one side of it and the hours bunch towards the morning or the afternoon, depending on which way the wall has turned. That is a declining dial, and it is calculated from the wall's measured bearing, never nudged into place on site.
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Slate wall dial, 300 mm square, north-facing
from $680
For a wall within a few degrees of true north. Dense blue-grey slate, engraved and fixed with stainless pins. 5-6 weeks.
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Declining wall dial in slate
from $1,900
For a wall facing anywhere from north-east round to north-west, calculated for its exact bearing. 5-6 weeks.
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Declining wall dial in bronze
from $3,800
The same calculation, cast and engraved on the monthly pour. 10-14 weeks.
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Site survey within 60 km of Hobart
$120
We take the wall's bearing against true north with a plumb line and the shadow at solar noon, and check what the eaves and the trees do to the low June sun. The $120 comes off the order in full.
Too far for a survey
Send your suburb or coordinates, a photograph of the wall with a compass bearing taken square to its face, and the size and material you would like. We correct the bearing for the magnetic variation where you live before a single line is drawn, and the reply carries a price.
Stone and paving · people as the gnomon
Ground Dials and Noon Marks
An analemmatic dial has no gnomon of its own. You stand on today's date and your shadow falls across the hour.
The hour stones sit on an ellipse. Its depth from north to south is its width multiplied by the sine of the latitude, which at Hobart is 0.68, so a dial six metres across is a little over four metres deep. Down the middle runs a date scale. In December you stand towards its southern end, in June towards its northern end, and at the equinoxes on the centre line, and your shadow then lies across the right hour.
Schools ask for them because children learn which way a southern shadow turns by turning it themselves. Community gardens ask because there is nothing to break or carry off: the gnomon walks home at the end of the day.
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Analemmatic ground dial
from $6,500
Hour stones and a date scale set into paving, sized to the space. Installation is priced on top, because it depends on the paving and the ground beneath it.
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Noon mark in brass
Quoted per site
One brass line set into a stone floor, step or terrace, on the meridian through that exact spot.
A noon mark is the simplest dial there is. When the shadow of an upright edge crosses the line, it is solar noon where you stand, which in Hobart comes at about 12:11 by the clock on average, earlier or later through the year as the equation of time moves it, and an hour later again under daylight saving. Why a Hobart dial runs behind the clock is set out in full on the setting-out page.
Stone, letters and corrections
Pedestals, Mottoes and Correction Plaques
A garden dial wants to sit where its face can be read without stooping. The pedestals are cut from Tasmanian sandstone, 900 mm tall, and drilled for stainless pins so a curious hand cannot turn the dial off true north.
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Tasmanian sandstone pedestal, 900 mm
$950
Carries a 250 mm or 400 mm garden dial at reading height.
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Motto, first 30 letters
Included
On any dial. Spaces and punctuation are not counted.
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Each letter after the thirtieth
$4
Short mottoes weather better in Tasmanian rain. If yours runs past eight words, we will say so at the drawing stage.
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Correction plaque, equation of time
Priced with the dial
A small engraved table set beside the dial, in the same bronze or slate.
Why a dial needs a correction plaque
The sun keeps its own time. Across the year it runs up to 16 minutes fast and 14 minutes slow against an even clock, because the earth's orbit is an ellipse and its axis is tilted. A correction plaque lists those minutes month by month, so anyone reading the dial can bring it to the clock. The figure-of-eight behind it is drawn on the setting-out page.
Old dials · new gnomons
Restoration
Old dials reach the workshop bent, worn soft, or perfectly sound and standing in the wrong town.
Most broken dials have met a mower, a ladder or a falling branch, and the gnomon has snapped or folded. Others have simply weathered: decades of rain soften the numerals until IIII and III look alike. The assessment tells you which, and what it will cost to put right.
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Assessment
$90
We check the gnomon angle, the hour lines and the latitude the dial was made for, and write back with what can be done.
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Typical restoration work
$350-1,200
A new bronze gnomon cast on the next first-Thursday pour, numerals recut, the plate cleaned and re-set on true north.
Dials that have moved house
A horizontal dial is calculated for the latitude where it was made, its hour lines and its gnomon together. A dial made for Melbourne at 37°49′ and set level in a Hobart garden reads 8:48 when the sun says nine, and 3:12 when it says three.
Fitting it with a Hobart gnomon puts the shadow right but leaves the hour lines wrong. Often the kinder fix is a stone wedge: tilt the whole plate 5°04′, raised along its southern edge, and it stands to the sky exactly as it did in Melbourne. A dial cast for a garden in the northern hemisphere is a harder case, because its hours run clockwise. We will tell you plainly whether it can be brought to tell Hobart time, or whether it is better kept as the handsome thing it has become.
Plainly put
What We Won't Make
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Decorative dials set to no latitude
A dial that cannot tell the time is an ornament with a misleading face, and every dial from this workshop is calculated for the place it stands.
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Resin, plastic or powder-coated imitation bronze
We pour real silicon bronze every first Thursday, and a coating that only looks like it chalks and lifts in the Tasmanian sun.
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Copies of mass-produced catalogue dials
Those are set for nowhere in particular, so copying one faithfully copies its error into your garden.
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Corporate logos or brand marks on the face
The face belongs to the hours, the place and the people a dial marks.
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Single castings larger than 1.2 m across
Beyond that the pour outgrows the workshop crucible. Large dials are set into paving as ground dials instead.
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Electronics, lights or solar-powered clock movements
A sundial already runs on the sun, and it has done so without a battery for a few thousand years.
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Hire dials for events and weddings
A dial set for one garden is wrong in the next. A marriage dial made to stay in your own garden is a different matter, and a joy to make.
To price a dial, write with your suburb or coordinates, which way the wall or garden faces, and the size and material you have in mind. We answer with a figure, not a form.