A small brass armillary planetarium, not signed but attributable to the workshop of G. F. Brander,

mid-18th century,

with a separate stepped black-stained wood stand. The square base-plate carries a compass on a raised and silvered rim with a degree scale in four quadrant (0-90-0-90-0) reading to 1° from the north and south points. Double brass and steel needle with locking arm (activating lever missing). Rising from the corners of the plate are four curved supports, with paw feet, for a short central column to which the horizon ring is attached by four arched struts. The ring is engraved, reading from the outside inwards, with:
1 a compass ring with thirty-two directions named in German
2 a zodiacal calendar (0° Aries = 20) March, the months with individually numbered days (February 28), the zodiac divisions with their symbols.
3 a doubled and reversed reading degree scale, 0-180° x 2.
Slotted into the horizon ring, is the sphere of the primum mobile composed of the north and south polar circles, tropics of Capricorn and Cancer, the Equator, and a broad Ecliptic ring carrying the signs of the zodiac with their names and symbols, each sign being divided to 30°. The polar axis carries a Sun sphere surrounded, on wire arms, by spheres for Mercury, Venus (missing), the Earth/Moon system, Mars with two satellites, Jupiter with four satellites (one missing), Saturn with six satellites. The two satellites for Mars, and the sixth for Saturn, may be later additions.

The form of the compass box, the treatment of the degree divisions of the signs of the zodiac on the ecliptic ring, the finely executed engraving and numeral forms are all characteristic of the workshop of G. F. Brander. Overall 18.3cm diam, side of base 12cm. Overall height 31cm.