Antique H. EDGWORTH, BRISTOL, ENGLAND Rare Large Ebony Octant with Bone Scale

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Antique H. EDGWORTH, BRISTOL, ENGLAND Rare Large Ebony Octant with Bone Scale :
$575.00

From my Octant and Sextant Collection: Here we have an Antique Navigational Maritime Ebony Octant byH. EDGWORTH, BRISTOL, ENGLAND, late 1700\'s to early1800\'s. Henry. Edgworth,appears to have been a nautical instrument maker form approx. 1779 to the early 1800\'s, in Bristol, England. His name appears on in the center of the arched bone scale.

The Octant frame is made of Ebony. The Ebony hasa nice rich dark color with lighter streaks here and there. It has a bonecartouche (nameplate) on the center ebony cross beam and two diamond shaped bone inlays. There is also a bone inlay on the rear surface for making notations with the bone scribe located in the cross beam. The nicely turned bone scribe handle is missing its short marking shaft. The octant has an Index mirror and a Horizonmirror that are showing loss of silvering due to age. The octant has a 3-piece set of Index Filter Shades with all glass present and crack-free. The large graduated arc has a bone index scale calibrated from -5 to 95 degrees. There is a bone Vernier Index at the end of the ebony & brass main Indexing Arm which is complete with thefine-threaded brass adjuster and a brass locking knob.The Brass surface of this arm is very nicely decorated !! The Octant is missing the sighting pinnula (\'peep sight\'). It looks to me that it was broke off probably when the octant was dropped which also resulted in some additional cracks in the frame. I have taken pictures of these cracks (see pics) and they all appear stable and the frame is solid. (Please note that you can see straight line in the wood which are the seams where the wood was originally jointed together.)The Octant has three good brass legs, two ofwhich look like they were moved to secondary locations. Octant is approx. 19\" tall (to tip of indexing arm) x 15-1/4\" wide at the arc. This is a somewhat rare octant due to its extra large size and the little seen maker H. EDGWORTH.
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