Sicard, H[ono]ré J[ose]ph A.

[PERPETUAL CALENDAR] Manuscript perpetual calendar with architectural decoration in straw marquetry.

France, presumably 1859 or 1860. Stiff card boards with wooden strips glued between, measuring 27 × 21 cm. Three strings visible on the back move the hand-labeled parts containin days, months, and years. Front with architectural decoration in straw marquetry. Except for a few minor missing parts and wear to rear part, about very good. Item #55878

The front cardboard covered in black paper, with marquetry architectural and ornamental framing, has been cut away in several places to allow the days of the week, months, and years (beginning with 1860) to be made visible by sliding paper strips. The paper strips can be moved by means of ribbons attached to the back of the calendar. At the end of the strip for the months is the name of the maker: “Hré Jph A. Sicard fecit,” presumably Honoré Joseph A. Sicard. Unfortunately, we were unable to find any further information about him.

The “perpetual calendar” developed from the so-called “computistical tables,” which were used to calculate the date of Easter. Its invention is said to have been by the Benedictine monk Abbo of Fleury in the Early Middle Ages (Engelen, Eva-Maria. Zeit, Zahl und Bild, Berlin and Boston, 1993). With the increasingly artful mechanisms of clockworks and calculating machines (Schickard, Pascal, Leibniz), the “perpetual calendar” became a field for demonstrating mathematical and mechanical programming. An outstanding example is the astronomical clock made at the end of the sixteenth century and located at Strasbourg Cathedral, whose “perpetual calendar” also precisely indicates an unusually long period of time, including all leap years. The manually operated calendar presented here, by contrast, extends only to the year 1872. These twelve years, however, encompass a turbulent period in French history.