Maker: Sykes, Henry

Year: 1785 c.

Year Range: -

Year Notes:

Manufacturing Location: France

Signature: Sykes / Place du Palais Royal / Paris

Signature Notes:

Inscriptions:

No stand present.

Collection: Louwman Collection of Historic Telescopes

Accession #: LC 226

Sources:

Cocquyt, Tiemen "400 Years of Telescopes" booklet, Zeeuws Museum, 2008. Item 36.

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.171. #226.

Public Notes:

"Hand held spyglass. Body made of Vincennes porcelain, with a polychrome decoration of birds on branches, with a short silver drawtube on which the combined coat of arms of the families Bourbon and Von Habsburg Lotharingen has been engraved. Ferrules of black coloured ivory . Signed: ‘Sykes / Place du Palais Royal / a Paris’. Length 9-18 cm, Ø 4.5 cm. Ca. 1785.

The heraldic coat of arms ‘Bourbon-Von Habsburg Lotharingen’ belonged to the French queen, the Austrian born princess Marie Antoinette (1755-1793). In 1770 she married the French dauphin, who would become King Louis XVI four years later. In 1793 both the king and the queen were beheaded during the French revolution.

The instrument maker Henry Sykes was an English optician, born in The Hague. In the 1770’s he had his shop on the first floor of the coffee house of “La Régence” and there he was appointed officially ‘Opticien du Roi’ in 1780. The year before, he had made the first bi-focal spectacles for its inventor, the American ambassador and scholar Benjamin Franklin" (Louwman and Zuidervaart, 2013).

Length (open): 180

Length (closed): 90

F-ratio:

Exit pupil:

Object status:

Objective type: singlet

Optical style

Physical style spyglass and pocket

Functional style

Materials: black ivory, glass, silver

Drawtube data:

Drawtube notes:

Objective Data

Eyepieces

Notes: