This is here for the convenience of members of the BSS while the content is being transferred to the new site.
The Society holds regular competitions, every other year for Photos and typically every five years for Sundials. This page will give details of forthcoming competitions and contains the results of recent ones.
Entries in the form of one or more photographs and a brief description are invited from amateurs, professionals, members and non-members, from the UK and overseas. Awards (in the form of certificates) will be made for new sundials and for sundial restoration projects, and for entries from juniors, schools and other youth groups.
Please send entries to Doug Bateman in the form of emails and attachments. Entries must be submitted by 31st December 2020.
For obvious reasons it has not been possible to run the Photo Competition at the Conference in the normal way. Instead, the entries can be seen at the link below and members are invited to vote for the winners as described in the June Newsletter. Don’t leave it too long, the deadline for voting is 18th. July!
The BSS Photo Competition is now open for entrants. All the entries will be displayed at the 2018 Conference in Norwich where the winners will be chosen by the delegates.
Previous entries and winners can be seen here. Good luck!
Please click Read More to see the full competition rules (or view, download or print them here) and note that each entry must be accompanied by a completed Entry Form, available here.
These are the results of the judging by Liverpool conference delegates – congratulations to the top ten and all the winners and particularly to Ian Butson, the overall winner.
This horizontal sundial in the southern hemisphere is by James A. Stegenga. It is located on the plaza in front of the jury room beside the City Courthouse in Marataízes which is about two degrees north of the Tropic of Capricorn and about 300 miles north-east of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The dial plate is in the shape of Brazil and the design incorporates 13 green nail heads marking the locations of 13 cities in Brazil. It was constructed over the period April to November 2015.
In a break with previous ideas Alastair Hunter has created an original new sundial that has two shadows, one showing the time of day and another the season of the year. This can add more pleasure to having a sundial in a garden. The design was created in 2015 and has been named DIHELION meaning ‘dual sun’ after ancient Greek words. The sundial was shown to the public at ‘Sculpture in the Garden’, the annual sculpture exhibition at The Savill Garden, Egham, Surrey, which ran from 1 September to 31 October.
In sundial terms, DIHELION is the combination in a single piece of a horizontal dial and an altitude dial. The horizontal dial shows the hours. The altitude dial shows the passage of the year’s four seasons by measuring the solstice and equinox declinations. Each dial plate carries a gnomon that casts a shadow onto the other dial. The horizontal plate carries a gnomon for the altitude dial. The vertical plate carries a polar gnomon for the horizontal dial.