Architectures of Heaven: 2027 Cellarius Wall Calendar

Mockup: the 2027 Cellarius wall calendar open at January, Cellarius’s plan of the Ptolemaic system above the January grid, on a white background

Architectures of Heaven — 2027 Cellarius Wall Calendar

$38.00

Twelve copperplate views of the heavens from Andreas Cellarius’s Harmonia Macrocosmica, the celestial atlas published in Amsterdam in 1660, reproduced from scans of its 1708 issue. Old Heaven’s 2027 calendar sets them out as a year of arguments about the sky. January puts the Earth at the centre; February moves the centre to the Sun; March tries Tycho Brahe’s answer, in which the planets circle the Sun and the Sun circles the Earth. Through the middle of the year come the Sun’s apparent spiral path, the phases of the Moon, the motions of Venus and Mercury and the sizes of the heavenly bodies. The year ends among the stars: the classical constellations in September and October, then, in November and December, the Christian sky that Julius Schiller proposed in 1627. Each month pairs a plate with a short note on what it shows and a line of our own. These are pictures of how people once reasoned about their place in the heavens, not charts of tonight’s sky. Hang it where the week’s appointments can sit beneath a whole universe.

What you get

A 14 × 11.5 in wall calendar that opens to 14 × 23 in when hung
Twelve plates from Andreas Cellarius’s Harmonia Macrocosmica, one for each month, January–December 2027
Glossy art pages
Matte, writable grid pages
US federal holidays, plus two astronomers’ birthdays: Nicolaus Copernicus (19 February) and Tycho Brahe (14 December)
Spiral bound, with a hanging hole
Printed in the USA by our print partner

Inspired by

In 1660 the Amsterdam publisher Johannes Janssonius issued the Harmonia Macrocosmica, an atlas of the heavens by Andreas Cellarius, a German-born schoolmaster who was rector of the Latin School at Hoorn, north of Amsterdam. Its twenty-nine large plates set the great world systems side by side: Ptolemy’s universe with the Earth at its centre, the Sun-centred system of Copernicus, and Tycho Brahe’s compromise between them. Maps of the starry sky follow, some with the Christian figures that Julius Schiller had proposed in 1627, others with the classical constellations.

Cellarius drew each system as a hypothesis, to be looked at and compared, and he meant the atlas to open a larger work on cosmography that never appeared. In 1694 the copperplates were bought by the Amsterdam publishers Gerard Valk and Petrus Schenk, who reissued them in 1708. The twelve plates in this calendar are reproduced from scans of a copy of that 1708 issue in the Municipal Library of Trento. Each is shown whole, inside its engraved frame, with a narrow margin of its own paper.

The order is ours. The year begins with the Earth at the centre, moves the centre to the Sun and then tries both at once. It follows the Sun, the Moon and the planets, and ends with the sky filled first by the old figures of myth and then, in November and December, by figures from the Bible.

These are not charts of tonight’s sky. They are pictures of how people once reasoned about their place among the stars. Hang the calendar where you will see it every day, and let each month ask January’s question again: where do we stand?

Plates: Andreas Cellarius, Harmonia Macrocosmica, first published by Johannes Janssonius, Amsterdam, 1660. Reproduced from the 1708 Amsterdam issue by Gerard Valk and Petrus Schenk in the Municipal Library of Trento (CBT 5869542, 5869605, 5869634, 5869621, 5870137, 5870173, 5870197, 5869938, 5870375, 5870414, 5870336, 5870364), via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Each plate is shown whole within its engraved frame, with a narrow margin of its own paper. Nothing has been redrawn or recoloured. Where a scan sat slightly askew, it has been turned square.

Made to order: each calendar is printed after you order it, then ships.

Made with AI assistance, following human aesthetic, mythic and historical direction.