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The SETTING of the SUNDIAL

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The SETTING of the SUNDIAL Teaching & Learning The Setting of the Sundial Q The Head of School, a former history teacher and a collector of art and antiques, recounts his investigation of the Chigwell Close sundial, a tale of twist and turns. by Darryl J. Ford ThiS STory reSembleS a Tall Tale – like the sundial had some connection to Penn as well. So, that is how stories about the fish that kept getting away – except I wasn’t my quest to recover this important Penn Charter artifact began. angling, but just looking for the sundial that once sat on a I took off to see Allan Brown, our school archivist, to ask pedestal in Chigwell Close. It had gone missing. whether the lost dial was in his possession or in Penn On a good day, when everything is running on schedule Charter’s archives at Haverford College. On my way, I and I don’t encounter too many surprises, I try to walk to bumped into Phil Palkon, our superintendent of grounds, who each of our academic buildings; this “management by walking informed me that Director of Admissions Steve Bonnie had around” allows me to see students and faculty and to observe the dial. I detoured to Steve Bonnie, who told me that the firsthand what is happening in our classrooms. One day last sundial was removed from Chigwell by the late Charlie fall, as I took my daily walk, I decided to pass through Simmons, who meticulously cared for our grounds prior to Chigwell Close just, as it happened, as our new discovery Phil. Dr. Bonnie said that, more than a decade ago, Charlie garden was approaching completion. removed the sundial to protect it from visiting pranksters on Inspired by the beauty of Chigwell – the captured rainwater PC/GA Day. The dial, Dr. Bonnie reported, was safely stored streaming through a curving bed of stones, the blueberry on the Strawbridge property, in the Carriage House where bushes, the flagstone pathways – I glanced at the old, discarded Charlie often worked. pedestal and had the grand idea to find the lost sundial and Within a moment, I bumped into Allan Brown – place both in the middle of a circular pattern of stepping management by walking around has many benefits – and was stones, which had just been set. Chigwell Close is named for able to ask him if the sundial was in the Carriage House. No, he Chigwell School, in the county of Essex, England, where said, it was in his possession on the second floor of Gummere William Penn studied in his youth, and I thought that the Library. And, later that day, Allan presented me with a box that Spring 2011 The Magazine of William Penn Charter School Page 7 Teaching & Learning Randy Granger holding the finished 8”x 8” brass plate, a replica of a sundial from William Penn’s grammar school. Head of School Darryl J. Ford followed the process through to the end; here, Grant Shaffer and Edward Malandro discuss plans to etch the final plate. Working on the floor of the art room, Granger Shaffer and Malandro hammer a pin into the plate before dropping it into the etching solution. contained a lovely brass sundial that I was certain had been in William Penn on the good ship Welcome. William Wistar Chigwell for decades. I was puzzled by the box, however, and Comfort OPC ’90 (that would be 1890!) and president-emeritus its label reading “Hummingbird Sundial made in Taiwan.” of Haverford College, accepted the sundial on behalf of his My sleuthing led me to show the sundial to Penn Charter fellow Penn Charter Overseers. Clearly, the piece was linked employees who are a bit long-in-the-tooth. I asked Steve to our founder as well as the courtyard named for his old Bonnie, who entered PC as a seventh grader in 1960 and has school. Chigwell Close, with its gurgling stream and playful remained here as a teacher, coach and administrator, and children, seemed the ideal setting for the dial, but I was Charlie Kaesshaefer, who arrived in ninth grade in 1967 and moved to protect the sundial for posterity. achieved the same triple-threat (please note, both men did I decided that the sundial would remain safe in our take a break from PC to attend college): Was this the dial that archives, and that I would have a replica made and installed you remember? Both of these PC veterans assured me that the in Chigwell. There was no one better-suited to tackle the next dial in the box was, in fact, the sundial they observed in phase of this project than Randy Granger, PC art teacher, Chigwell for decades. I was making progress. recipient of the Randy W. Granger Chair in Visual Arts, and But, with the brass sundial in my hands – the significance expert in art archeology and historic preservation. He was of the artifact gave me pause. Dated 1666 and bearing the eager to inspect the dial and get to work. inscription “Tempus Fugit,” the sundial was given to Penn Randy observed that a piece of the dial’s arm was broken Charter by the Chigwell School as a tribute to Penn. and questioned whether our archives at Haverford College According to articles Allan subsequently found in Penn might contain any photographic records that would help him Charter Magazine and Chigwell School’s magazine, the dial fashion a better replica. Allan dutifully traveled to Haverford was presented to Penn Charter just after World War II by and, imagine my surprise when he returned to school without Henry Gillam Reifsnyder OPC ’15, on behalf of the Welcome any photos but with a box containing a sundial, dated 1666. Society of Pennsylvania, a group whose members were direct On the back of the dial, inscribed in the brass, was the word: descendants of passengers who arrived in America with original. Imagine my surprise, too, to realize that some other Spring 2011 The Magazine of William Penn Charter School Page 8 forward-thinking head of school had the fine idea to create a replica of the 1666 sundial and place it in Chigwell – keeping the original safe and secure! Q So, I now had two sundials. Or, maybe three? According to … Better than riches, the school history published in 1989 RanDy GRanGER anD HiS STuDEnts researched the in honor of Penn Charter’s tricentennial, that head of school who ordered up the replica was prescient: “[the dial] was history of engraving and etching with the intent to replicate the retired to the Quaker collection at Haverford College for 1666 Chigwell School sundial using – to the extent possible – security and replaced by a replica which soon disappeared.” 17th century engraving tools and techniques. a document So, maybe three dials: the dial in the PC archive, the dial published in the late 1600s, around the time Penn Charter was engraved “original” in the Haverford archive, and the missing established, became a critical source for their work: Mechanick replica? Or, was the missing replica referred to in … Better Dyalling, by Joseph Moxon. than riches actually the same dial that Charlie Simmons The sundial team was also excited to discover a 19th century removed, the one that ended up in the PC archive? And, what etching technology, one that required no toxic acids. using a of the box with the puzzling reference to Taiwan and a 6-volt lantern battery and a plastic tub, they created a deep, hummingbird? I wasn’t finished yet. handsome etching with a combination of 6.5L of water and 50 Real-World Learning oz. of fine sea salt. What has been even more exciting than this fish tale of a sundial is the work that Randy Granger and his students have done to replicate the artifact. Together, they made a series of important discoveries and decisions about the replica: E They would create the replica using materials and techniques from the era of the original. Randy made gravers (engraving tools) and researched the alloy in the original brass. He and his students used as a manual the fourth edition of Mechanick Dyalling – a 1703 document with the descriptive subtitle: “TEACHING Any Man, tho’ of an Ordinary Capacity and unlearned in the Mathematicks, To Draw a True SUN- DYAL” – to etch and engrave the brass. (See sidebar.) E The replica should function as an accurate sundial. The angle of the arm of the dial on the original was set to the longitude and latitude of Chigwell, England, and could never have told accurate Philadelphia time; the replica would be set to Philadelphia’s latitude coordinate, 41°N. This exciting classroom experience began in Fall 2010 with Randy’s Advanced Architecture class and continued this spring with Ed Malandro and Grant Shaffer, two seniors who shaped an independent study around the project and became engrossed in the work. Grant was surprised that he looked forward to spending not just his class time but his free periods in the art room working on the dial. “It was a real-world project because it integrated math, science, history, English, Latin, art – all these disciplines in one project.” “Mr. Granger calls it real learning because you’re learning by doing,” Ed said. “We had so many failures, and we repeated so many steps again and again. Sometimes it felt like we weren’t making progress. And then, one day – Pop! – it all fell into place.” Caption goes here, suscipit natu refero augue vulputate, autem natu typicus saluto. Macto nimis validus, haero meus nobis consequa. Postscript On another of my walks, I found Lower School science teacher Steve Wade, who co-clerked the committee planning Not knowing if and where this story will end, I am pleased the discovery garden in Chigwell Close, to tell him this tale.
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