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Lot 77
An Edmund Culpeper brass universal equinoctial ring dial, English, early 18th century,
29 August – 9 September 2025, 12:00 BST
Online, London, KnightsbridgeSold for £4,096 inc. premium
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An Edmund Culpeper brass universal equinoctial ring dial, English, early 18th century,
signed Edm. Culpeper fecit, suspension loop sliding over 180 degree scale, chapter ring with Roman numerals inset with black enamel, central bridge with pin-hole sight moving over calendar and zodiac scales 15.2cm (6in) diameter
Footnotes
Provenance:
Trevor Philip & Sons, London, 2007.
Private collection.
Edmund Culpeper (1670 – 1737) was apprenticed into the Grocer's Company to Walter Hayes, engraver and mathematical instrument maker of Moorfields London in 1684. By 1700, Culpeper had taken over his master's shop and continued to trade under the sign of the crossed daggers, in Moorfields
Culpeper is perhaps more commonly remembered for his contribution to optical instruments, in particular microscopes. A compound tripod microscope was named after him, although it is unclear whether he was the original inventor. He is associated with popularising two key elements of microscope design, the sub-stage mirror and the tripod microscope. Culpeper was making the screw-barrel microscope, of James Wilson's design, from 1700.
He boldly advertised in 1710 his services in microscopes as being broad in selection, with a variety second to none in the industry.
In addition, Culpeper was highly acknowledged for producing mathematical instruments in silver, brass, ivory and wood, with particular skills in the engraving of scales, dials, and sectors. We know of a memorial brass engraved by his hand in 1694, for a Dorothy Williams, in Pimperne church, Dorset. Curiously, he only became a freeman in 1714, reporting to take an apprentice the following day.
By 1737, the year in which Culpeper died, he was noted as trading 'near the Royal Exchange, Cornhill'. Following his death, his son followed his father into the trade.