Garden art

Sundial

Sundial Sundials can make a garden even more beautiful. Sure, it is the flowers and other plants that truly make up a garden, but that does not mean that the right garden art will not enhance your garden! We have beautiful stepping stones, sculptures, fountains, and other garden art.

How does a sundial work? As the sun moves accros the sky. The shadows the sun casts move in a clockwise direction for objects in the northern hemisphere or counter clockwise if you live in the southern hemisphere. Because the earth is tilted and rotates around the sun. the shadows cast by the sun change from day to day. Because the earth is round, or curved, the ground at the base of a shadow stick will not be at the same angle to the sun's rays as at the equator. This will cause the shadow of the shadow stick to not move at a uniform rate during the day. Over the years, man discovered that angling the gnomon and aiming it north made a more accurate sundial. Because its angle makes up for the tilt of the Earth, the hour marks remained the same all year long. After this discovery, people were able to construct sundials that were much better at keeping accurate time.

Egyptians were one of the first civiliazations to use the sundial. Egyptians began using a T-shaped stick to keep time. The t-shaped stick was made of one vertical stick and one crossbar The five hours were written on the stick in hieroglyphics. In the morning, the stick was placed so that it faced east. The shadow of the crossbar would then fall across the stick and move toward the crossbar until noon. In the afternoon, the stick was turned to face west.

Over the years many different types of sundails were created to tell time. During the Renaissance period sundials changed rapidly and many designs were created for art as well as more accurate time keeping. In addition to having hour and minute marks for telling time, other features were sometimes added. Some sundials had markings to indicate the seasons, the calendar date, the times of sunrise and sunset, Zodiac signs, and the points of the compass.

People continued to use sundials after the clock was invented. As modern society has begun to keep accurate time with the clock, people have found other uses of the Sundial. Today, people put sundials in the garden for as art and decoration.

Click to view cart