Collection:
Louwman Collection of Historic Telescopes
Accession #:
LC 56
Sources:
Project investigation.
Cocquyt,Tiemen. "400 Years of Telescopes" booklet, Zeeuws Museum, 2008. Item 9.
Louwman, P.J.K., and Zuidervaart, H.J., "A Certain Instrument to See Far: Four Centuries of Styling the Telescope Illustrated by a Selection of Treasures from the Louwman Collection of Historic Telescopes". Wassenaar, 2009. p.76. #60.
Louwman, P.J.K., and Zuidervaart, H.J., "A Certain Instrument for Seeing Far: Four Centuries of Styling the Telescope Illustrated by a Selection of Treasures from the Louwman Collection of Historic Telescopes". Wassenaar, 2013. p.83. #56
Public Notes:
Main tube covered with red ‘bordeaux’ coloured leather with gold tooling. Three drawtubes covered with green leather, signed twice with a crowned monogram “AG”. Compound eyepiece with three lenses. The objective - and ocular fittings are made of boxwood. Late seventeenth century / Early eighteenth century(Louwman and Zuidervaart, 2013).
The French instrument maker signing with the crowned monogram “AG” has not yet been identified. In other collections at least three other telescopes with this signature have been recorded. See Bedini (1971), 181, Bolt (2009), 64/65, and Christie’s auctions, South Kensington, December 2002, lot 110. "A possible workshop is the ‘fabrique de lunettes’ at the Paris ‘Quai de l’Horloge’, across the ‘Palais Royale’, called ‘AU GRIFFON’. This workshop was founded in the early eighteenth century by an optician maker with the surname ‘Marie’. He delivered lenses to the Observatoire de Parisin 1736. After his death, his widow, ‘La veuve Marie’, continued the workshop until the 1770s. Her successor Étienne-Antoine Putois, in turn, sold the company about 1800 to Gaspard Rochette, whose son of the same name continued the firm ‘Au Griffon’ until the 1820s" (Louwman and Zuidervaart, 2013).
Dioptrice is made possible by the generous
support of the National Science Foundation, the National
Endowment for the Humanities, the Program in the History and
Philosophy of Science at the University of Notre Dame, and the Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum.
