What do you do when you see a sundial in a garden? Do you try to tell the time? Or approach it as an archaic object best used as a drinks stand? For us, the sundial is a fascinatingly ancient piece of technology that has, nevertheless, stood up much better to the passage of time than other dusty inventions. Early computers barely fit in a shipping container, but the sundial can sit by your bird bath. An original smart phone won't even turn on, but centuries on an antique sundial continues to judiciously mark the hours.
For the July/August 2026 issue of the Magazine Antiques, we interviewed Hudson Valley dealer Barbara Israel about the form and function of sundials, focusing on one 20th century example that defies contemporary understanding of how a sundial works and what it must look like to perform that function. A boy, seated with legs crossed and holding with a spider on a thread, Bronze Boy with Spider by William Dryden Paddock (1873-1956) is an example of the analemmatic form.
Learn about the analemmatic sundial and how to use sundials in ways that are both stunning and sympathetic to the form in our article, which you can read here!
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Image of Boy with Spider courtesy of Newfields Museum. All other images courtesy of Barbara Israel Garden Antiques.