The Golden Orrery

About this work

The Golden Orrery sets two great discs side by side on a dark ground. The left one is weathered gold, like an old astronomical plate, with a glowing centre. The right one is a fine gold diagram of circles, arcs and angles that suggests an orrery or a star chart.

For centuries, people tried to fit the sky onto something they could hold. Astrolabes carried engraved plates with lines for the horizon and altitude, each made for a particular latitude, and celestial maps charted the constellations from Ptolemy's star catalogue to the great printed atlases of the seventeenth century. The orrery, a clockwork model of the planets circling the Sun, took its name in the early eighteenth century from Charles Boyle, 4th Earl of Orrery, for whom one was built. This picture borrows the look of these instruments rather than copying any one of them.

As celestial map art it suits a study, a home library, a bedroom or a quiet living room with navy, charcoal or deep green walls. The 16:9 format fits neatly above a desk, bed or low sideboard, and on a 4K TV or Samsung Frame the dark ground blends into the screen. For a night-sky wall, pair it with Gold Moons on Teal.