The Rete
A pierced star-map of forty-eight pointers. It rides above the plate and carries the fixed stars across your night in a single, weightless turn.
Brass · latitude 41°N · 48 pointers
Read the
Read the
hour of the
stars.
A brass astrolabe cast by hand — rete, zodiac ring and rule turning as one. Take hold of it, spin, and let the heavens drift to rest.
Sun on the ecliptic
Turn the rete to read
Turn the rete to read
Drag the disc — release to let it coast
The Instrument
Four layers, turning as one accord.
Every Atelier astrolabe is composed of concentric brass discs — each engraved by a single hand, each answerable to a different question of the heavens.
The Zodiac Ring
Twelve houses divided into three hundred and sixty parts, engraved so fine you read the ecliptic by candlelight. Rotate it and the sun finds its longitude for any date you please.
The Rule & Alidade
A slender brass rule spanning the whole face. Sight a star along its edge, note where it crosses the plate, and the instrument answers with the true local hour.
The Tympan
Beneath it all, a fixed plate cut for your latitude — horizon, meridian and the almucantars that map the sky above your own doorway.
0.3°
Engraving tolerance. Each division is scribed with a diamond point to within a third of a degree — the difference between reading the hour and merely guessing it. We test every casting against Polaris before it leaves the bench.
The Six Scales
What is engraved, and what it answers.
An astrolabe carries six graduated scales across its two faces. Each one converts a sighting into a number; none of them requires you to believe anything. Drag the disc above and the rete reports the sun’s longitude off the zodiac ring.
0–90° Altitude
Hang the instrument by its ring, sight the star along the alidade, and read its height off the limb. The almucantars on the tympan are drawn for the same scale, one circle every two degrees.
0–360° Azimuth
The azimuth arcs cut the almucantars at right angles. Where the star falls between them gives its bearing, counted from the south point of the horizon.
12 × 30° Ecliptic longitude
The zodiac ring runs 0° to 30° within each of the twelve signs. Set it to today’s date and the sun’s place on the ecliptic is fixed — the reading the disc above reports.
±23.5° Declination
The tropics of Cancer and Capricorn are scribed as the outer and inner limits of the sun’s travel. Everything between them is the year.
I–XII Unequal hours
Below the horizon line, twelve curved lines divide the night into hours that stretch in winter and shrink in summer — the hour as it was reckoned before the pendulum.
12 × 12 Shadow square
On the reverse, umbra recta and umbra versa, each in twelve parts. Sight the top of a tower, read the shadow square, and its height follows by proportion.
Ethos
An instrument should not tell you the time. It should teach you to ask the sky.— The Atelier's first ledger, marginalia
Commission
Have one cast for your latitude.
We open the crucible four times a year. Leave a sending-address and we will write when the next brass is poured — with the plate cut for the sky above your name.