First Day — Instruments, Automata & Curiosities
The first day is brass. Brass is honest: it takes the file where the file is set, it keeps the number cut into it, and it does not care whose hand turns it. Buyers who intend to be careful are advised to be careful on the first day, while care is still cheap.
— Perpetua Lutt, from the note prefixed to the first day's sale
The fog came up the customs cut in the night and stood in Rope Street at eight, so that the first barrow-load was carried in by lantern at a distance of nine feet from the door. By ten it had thinned to the height of a man's shoulder and lay along the boards of the Long Room in the way the room is used to. The light through the lead glazing came down grey and even. The porters call this good light, and it is good light: nothing shines in it, and every file-stroke, ground and solder-seam on the presentation table can be seen by a buyer who leans in.
The room filled to the third window and stood at the back. Present at the rostrum, Bram Toop, crier of this house, with the day's candles sealed at the Chamber of Ordinances and a spare from the same batch. At the presentation table, the chief appraiser of this house. At the small desk to the right of the pay table, the night clerk, who keeps the day's record as well as the night's. At the pay table, Willemke Snoy, with the book open and the deposit box. Carriage by Hanne Brust, head porter, and five men, with three barrows tyred in hemp. The chair of the senior partner was set at the right of the rostrum and stood empty through the day; his hand is on the warrant of sale and was not needed in the room.
Also in the room: dealers of this city to the number of thirty and some, two factors from inland, the drapers' company in a body, and Casimir Ohl of the Wolfsgat, on the third bench from the back, with a glass, a folding rule, and a case of red pencils. Ilsabet Vantoc was in the room from ten and declined a seat, holding a leather case of papers under her arm. Barbara Wett sat in the second row, came for one lot, and stayed for the day. Sander Vogelaer, agent of the Staple Bank, sat at the end of the second row, took no paddle, and made no bid.
The estimates of the day, added at the table, come to nine thousand marks and some, of which a single lot is four thousand. The house looks to the first day to be quick and level and to set a temper for the three days after it: instruments sell to the trade, and the trade does not linger. Nothing offered on this day is claimed by more than one person, which cannot be said of the second day or the fourth.
The words of the rostrum, printed for the crier and read at ten on each of the four days:
"The house is Corvisser and Lutt. The room is the Long Room. The book is open at the table and closes at the fall of the last hammer. Every lot is sold as it stands and where it stands, with its faults, and with the errors of its description; the plate is not the lot and the estimate is not a warranty. A candle burns to the notch and the hammer falls at the notch, not before it and not after it. No bid is taken from a person not entered in the book. The first lot is number one."
Notice · Instruments and the Customs Stamp
Brass, glass and clockwork leave this hall by hand and not by crane; the crane in the gable is not used on the first day. A buyer taking an instrument out of the city gets his stamp at the Waterbailiff's shed on the Customs Quay. This house does not get it for him and does not hold his lot while he goes for it. Buyers are asked to leave the presentation table clear of gloves, sticks and papers, and not to lean upon it; it is a table and not a rail.
1 · The Velhagen Tide-Reckoner
A reckoner of tide-hours in brass, 7 inches across, of three plates riveted at the centre and turning one within another, weighing 11 ounces with the index arm. The outer plate carries the days of the moon, the middle the twelve months of this reckoning, the inner the hours and half-hours of the gate. Set to the moon's day and read at the index, it gives the hour of high water at the Sluice Basin and the hour the gate is shut against it, correctly, having been cut for that gate and for no other water. Elsewhere it is out by as much as forty minutes, and out consistently, which is a thing to know before it is carried inland. Provenance: Hilke Quist, dealer in ship instruments, of the Staple Quay, in whose shop it hung against the door-post for nineteen years; thence, by descent, the deceased. Condition: good; the index arm bent and straightened, and honestly straightened; the inner plate worn shallow at the flood hours and legible throughout.
Beneath the foot, in lead-white, the figure iii. This is the deceased's own numbering. It is not the numbering of this catalogue, and where it appears it is described and not followed.
2 · Three Sounding Leads of the Nachtvogel
Three hand leads, of 7, 9 and 14 pounds, each hollowed at the base for the tallow, the lines hemp, marked in the customary manner with leather, calico and red bunting, and spliced to the strop with a long splice in each case. All three came out of one locker and are of one hand's casting. Cast into water, a lead of this set brings up no ground in the tallow, and the line does not hang plumb: it lies over toward whatever body lies unrecovered within a ship's length of the place, and the lead comes up cold in warm water. They are said to have found the master of the Nachtvogel on the second cast. Provenance: Pieter Tjaard, master of her, lost off the outer bank; thence Sivert Sipke, diver, of the Customs Quay, who raised the locker under licence of the Waterbailiff's office and was paid a third of what he brought up; thence the deceased. Condition: the 9-pound scored and re-cast at the crown; the lines sound and lately re-served; the calico mark of the 14-pound renewed.
The Sounding Leads of the Nachtvogel
Wondrous item, common
Each lead can be cast this way once per day. As an action, cast a lead into water: you learn the true depth beneath it and the nature of the bottom, exactly. If a creature has died in that water within 300 feet of where the lead struck bottom and its body has not been taken out, the line lies over toward the body and you learn the direction and the distance to the nearest 10 feet.
The tallow comes up clean and cold, and it comes up cold in any water. The leads say nothing of who, or when, or how long the body has lain there. Cast in water where nothing lies, they hang plumb and are a plain and rather good set of leads.
3 · A Cabinet of Forty Moths, One Wanting
A shallow cabinet of mahogany, 18 inches by 13, with a glazed lid and a bed of cork papered white. The cork is pricked for forty-one and forty are filled. The specimens are moths of this coast and of the inland heaths, set in the manner of a schoolroom rather than a cabinet, the pins driven too deep and the wings held with strips of card cut with a table-knife. Each is labelled in a boy's hand, in ink faded to brown, with the place and the day of taking. The labels are transcribed at the table as they stand and are not corrected.
The forty-first bed is empty. Its label is in place and is written in the same hand as the others. It reads: at the Sluice, iv Winemonth 1584. There is no pin in the bed and no pin-hole in the cork, and the card of the label has not been lifted or re-glued.
Provenance: the deceased, being of his own forming in boyhood, the case bought for him by Dirck Feddes, schoolmaster of the Beguinage lane. Condition: the glass of the lid cracked corner to corner and held with a strip of paper; two specimens rubbed to the thorax; one hawk-moth entire and very fine. The estimate is for the cabinet.
4 · Prillevits' Singing Bird
A singing bird in a cage of drawn silver wire, the cage 14 inches to the ring and 6 inches across the hoop, upon a base of gilt brass with a drawer for the key. The bird is 2¼ inches from beak to tail, the body enamel over copper, the wings and crest feathered with the feathers of a goldfinch laid in gum, the eyes garnet. The bellows are kid leather, twice renewed; the whistle is a brass pipe with a sliding piston and a water reservoir of half a gill; the beak, the tail and the head move with the song, and the bird turns upon the perch at the end of each air.
The key has seven notches. Six of them play, and play the six airs entered in the maker's list, which is pasted inside the base and is here transcribed. At the seventh notch the movement runs, the bellows fill, the bird opens its beak and turns upon the perch, and nothing is heard.
The Airs, as Entered in the Maker's List
| Notch | Title in the list | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Reveille | Sleepers within 60 feet who sleep of themselves wake and are not startled. |
| 2 | The Weather Air | You learn whether the next hour brings fog, rain, or neither, within a mile. |
| 3 | The Hour | Runs one hour exactly and marks the quarters; used by the maker to time a setting. |
| 4 | The Customs Air | Carries. It is heard clearly at 400 feet and through one wall. |
| 5 | Duifje's Air | Long, and much liked. A listener who hears it out is pleasant company for an hour. |
| 6 | The Bell Air | Sounded within 30 feet of a bell, it sets the bell humming without a stroke. |
| 7 | — | The list gives no title. The line is ruled and left blank. |
- 1594 · made by Sibbe Prillevits, clockmaker, of the Sluice Quay, for her own shop window
- 1601 · Duifje Stoevel, lace-dealer of the Kolkgracht, by purchase out of the maker's estate, 180 marks
- 1618 · thence the deceased, by purchase, with the key, the list, and a spare set of bellows in kid
Condition: excellent for its kind. The silver of the cage rubbed bright at the ring where it has been carried; three wires of the hoop replaced with wire of the same gauge and not of the same drawing; two feathers of the crest lost, and the gum yellowed at the shoulder. The movement is clean, lately oiled, and runs to the seventh notch.
[in red ink] The bellows are not twice renewed, they are three times renewed, and the last man used sheep where kid was and stitched it with a saddler's awl. Look at the heel of them with a glass. As for the seventh notch, the stop is not broken and never was: it has been filed off the barrel deliberately and filed cleanly, by someone who wanted the notch to turn and the pipe to stay shut. The house has polished the cage and left that. C.O. (Lowmonth 1637)
Prillevits' Singing Bird
Wondrous item, uncommon
The bird has 7 charges and regains all of them at dawn. As an action you set the key to a notch and expend 1 charge; the bird sings that air for 1 minute, or for an hour in the case of the third. The effect of each of the first six airs is as entered in the maker's list above. The airs cannot be muffled, hurried, or played over one another, and the bird will not sing with the cage door open.
The seventh notch is the reason for the price. While the seventh runs — 1 minute — no sound made within 20 feet of the cage can be heard by anything outside that space, and no sound from outside is heard within it. Speech, bells, gunfire and screaming all stop at the edge of it. Inside, everything is heard as usual, including the bellows, which are the only thing in the cage that makes a noise.
The bird does not sing the seventh air. It opens its beak for the length of the minute and turns upon the perch at the end, as it does for the other six.
5 · The Weighhouse Balance of 1602, with False Weights
An office balance of the sworn pattern: steel beam of 31 inches with brass ends and a knife-edge lately dressed, brass pans of 9 inches on silk cords, in a fitted deal case with a glazed front, stamped four times with the stamp of the Weighhouse and once with the year. It weighs true to two drachms in fourteen pounds and was proved before a sworn weigher on the second day of view.
With it, forming part of the lot, the eight brass weights tried and condemned in the cause of 1602, each bored under the base and stopped with a plug of lead-coloured wax, each bearing the mark of the court upon the shoulder. The set is offered as the balance's history and not as weights; it may not lawfully be used in trade in this city, and the buyer is asked to note the bar upon the ticket.
The Condemned Set, as Entered in the Cause of 1602
| Stamped | Found to weigh | Short by |
|---|---|---|
| 4 lb. | 3 lb. 14 oz. 2 dr. | 1 oz. 14 dr. |
| 2 lb. | 1 lb. 15 oz. 3 dr. | 13 dr. |
| 1 lb. | 15 oz. 6 dr. | 10 dr. |
| 8 oz. | 7 oz. 13 dr. | 3 dr. |
| 4 oz. | 3 oz. 15 dr. | 1 dr. |
| 2 oz. | 2 oz. | — |
| 1 oz. | 1 oz. | — |
| ½ oz. | ½ oz. | — |
Every weight of the set is short in the same direction, and the three smallest are true, which is how the thing was worked for eleven years and how it was found in a morning. A merchant who asks to see the small weights proved is a merchant who has been robbed by the large ones.
- 1602 · of the Weighhouse of this city, and used in the cause of that year
- 1619 · sold out of the office when the great beam was renewed, by warrant, at the Staple Quay
- thence Klaas Vantoc, pawnbroker, of the Wolfsgat, who kept it in his shop-window for the instruction of his customers
- thence, at a sale in this city, to the deceased
Condition: good throughout; one silk cord replaced; the glass of the case whole; the case lock without its key. The wax plugs of the weights are dry and two have fallen out and are in the case in a paper.
6 · A Diver's Bell, Half-Scale, in Glass
A model of a diving bell at one half, blown in a single piece of green glass, 13 inches high and 9 across the skirt, with a sole of lead run in at the rim and two brass rings for the tackle. Lowered in a tank, it shows the air standing in the crown and the water rising in the skirt very prettily for three feet. Below three feet it goes down and continues to go down. The sole carries about one grain of lead more than the maker computed, and the whole difference between an instrument and an ornament is that grain. Provenance: Sivert Sipke, diver, who had it made at his own charge for a trial before a committee; thence the deceased. Condition: sound, a bruise in the glass at the crown and a chip at the skirt. The committee did not sit.
7 · The Spectacles of Boudewijn Bril
A pair of spectacles of the nose-bridge sort, the frames silver and struck twice with the maker's mark, a small B in a lozenge, the lenses 1⅜ inches and ground plano-convex of a long focus, in a case of black shagreen lined with wash-leather. The maker ground them for himself and wore them thirty years, and the silver of the bridge is worn to a wire on the left side, as it is on every pair he kept.
Worn, they read what a plain eye cannot: a crabbed hand, a clerk's contractions, a script the wearer has never learned to speak, a line under a stain. They will also show, in a room, where a named hand has written before, the marks standing pale upon the surface they were made upon, whether the paper is in the room or has been ash for a generation. The house has satisfied itself of this upon the third table of the Presentation Gallery and does not print what was read there.
- ground and framed by Boudewijn Bril, spectacle-maker, of the Staple Quay, for his own use
- by bequest, Anselm Haak, merchant of this city, the maker's creditor and his friend, in that order
- 1616 · thence the deceased, at the Haak sale, on the second table, 210 marks, with the case and a second pair not offered here
Condition: good; the left bow re-soldered at the joint; both lenses free of scratch or bloom; the shagreen of the case rubbed white at the corners and the wash-leather perished at the hinge.
A claim in respect of this lot is entered by Ilsabet Vantoc, upon a deed of gift, holograph, said to be of the deceased's hand and dated 1614, whereby the lot is said to have been given to Berthe Vantoc, deceased, and not delivered. The dates of the deed and of the provenance above are set out as they stand. The lot is offered without prejudice to the claim, which stands referred to the Court of Wards.
The Bril Spectacles
Wondrous item, uncommon
While you wear the spectacles you can read any handwriting you can see, however crabbed, abbreviated, faded, water-run, or written in a script you do not know. You read the letters and the words; you learn nothing of a tongue you do not speak beyond what the letters say. Ciphers, erasures made with a knife, and writing that was never in a hand remain closed to you.
Once per day, as an action, you can hold up a document and name the hand that wrote it. For 1 minute you see, pale upon the walls, tables, glass and floor of the room you stand in, everywhere that same hand has written in that room within the last 40 years, and you can read it. The marks show whether the paper survives or not. They do not show when, or in what order, and the room does not show a hand that wrote elsewhere and carried the paper in.
The lenses are of a long focus and were ground for an old man. Worn for more than an hour by anyone else, they bring on a headache behind the eyes that no rest shortens: you have disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight for 1 hour after you take them off.
8 · A Barrel-Organ That Plays One Air Only
A barrel-organ in a mahogany case, 22 inches by 15, with 26 pipes of pine and lead, a single bellows worked by the crank, and one barrel. The barrel is pinned for one air and has room for four more, marked out on the wood in pencil and never pinned. The air is the burial piece used at the Beguinage and at St. Bavo's ground, thirty-one bars, and the barrel begins it again without a stop, so that a man who turns the crank and thinks of something else has played it eleven times. Provenance: Wibbe Hobbe, bell-founder of this city, in whose loft it stood beside the tuning bench; thence the deceased. Condition: going; four pipes dumb from a split in the wind-trunk, a half-day's work for a competent hand; the crank handle new; the case cracked along the top and waxed.
9 · The Counting Hand
A right hand of lime wood, 9 inches from the wrist to the tip of the middle finger, the fingers jointed with brass pins and moving stiffly of themselves, mounted at the wrist in a socket of turned pear so that it stands upright on a table. Under the palm, nine small bone plates in a slot, which rise and fall with the counting and stand as they were left. Shown a number of like things, the hand counts them faster than a clerk and does not miscount; the nine plates hold the last nine counts and can be read off by anyone who has had the trick of it shown once. Provenance: Reinout Wendelmar, antiquary of this city, whose Inventory of 1608 was numbered with it; thence the deceased. Condition: good; the third finger cracked at the second joint and glued; two plates chipped at the edge and legible; the socket lately re-waxed. It was used in this hall against the porters' tally on the mornings of view and agreed with it on two mornings of three.
The Counting Hand
Wondrous item, common
Set the hand on a firm surface and name a kind of thing — coins, sacks, tiles, arrows, casks, lots, persons. As an action, the hand counts every such thing in plain sight within 60 feet, up to a thousand, and the count is exact; the fingers work for a round and stop, and you read the number off the bone plates. It counts nothing it cannot see: a closed box counts as one box.
The plates hold the last nine counts until a tenth pushes the oldest out. The hand cannot be made to count wrong by illusion, disguise, or a creature's efforts to conceal itself: a hidden or invisible thing standing in plain space is counted, though the hand gives no clue where it stands.
It makes no distinction between things and persons, and it does not stop at a number it has given before. Set twice within the hour before the same shelf of this hall, it has given two numbers. The hand was afterwards taken down and opened at the bench, and was found sound, complete, and clean.
10 · An Astrolabe Re-engraved for a Foreign Latitude
A planispheric astrolabe of brass, 6½ inches across the limb, with mater, rete, one plate and an alidade, weighing a pound and six ounces complete. The instrument is old and was good. The plate has been stopped out and cut again for a latitude that is not this city's and is not any shore of this sea, but an inland latitude some fifty miles south and east of the last salt water; the place is not named upon the plate, upon the mater, or in the case. The rete is unaltered and answers to the old cutting, so that the instrument as it stands is exact for a town it does not name and wrong for the town it is in. Provenance: Pieter Tjaard, master mariner, in whose chest it went twice to the north; thence the deceased. Condition: fair; the throne bent; the alidade a replacement of thinner stock and not of the same brass; the old degrees showing as ghosts under the new where the stopping-out was rubbed thin.
[in red ink] The limb is not re-engraved; the limb is original and only the plate is cut over, and whoever wrote the ticket has never had a plate out of a mater in his life. The cutting is done with a graver of a wider sweep than the old work, and the ground was stopped with rottenstone and wax, not scraped, which is the practice of a die-sinker and not of an instrument-maker. It is cut for two-and-fifty degrees and some minutes. There is nothing at that latitude but ploughland, and a man does not pay a die-sinker to find ploughland. C.O.
11 · Two Fire-Dogs in the Form of Customs Officers
A pair of fire-dogs cast as officers of the customs, 17 inches high, standing at ease with the coat open, each holding a stamp at the height of the chest, the billet-bars cast in one with the figures. The stamps are the point of them: cast from an office die, the faces legible, so that either dog, warmed and pressed to paper, leaves the impression of a stamp of this city. Those dies were broken and renewed in the ordinary course and the impression is no longer current. Provenance: Wolter Slecht, Waterbailiff of this city, in whose hearth-place they stood; thence the deceased. Condition: sound; both figures burned white on the fire side, as is proper; one billet-bar cracked at the heel and holding. Offered with a letter of the Waterbailiff's office, dated 1621, requesting their return, and the note of hand by which the request was answered.
12 · The Orrery of Wett
An orrery upon a turned column of ebony, 27 inches to the finial and 19 inches over the base, the plates brass, the sun a ball of silvered brass of 2 inches, the six spheres of glass, filled and stoppered. Beneath the ecliptic plate is a calendar ring of the twelve months of this reckoning, engraved with the days and with the tide-hours, and read against three hands: a hand of brass for the day, a hand of blued steel for the moon, and a third hand of black steel, shorter than either, which the maker's list calls the mourning hand. The movement is of two trains, the going train fusee and of the maker's usual excellence, the second train of a construction not met with elsewhere and not described in the list. It is signed upon the inside of the back plate, G. WETT, VELHAGEN, and dated 1589.
Wound, the orrery keeps the calendar and the tides of this city to the minute; it was proved against the harbour tables on each of the three days of view and did not vary. The mourning hand does not go with the trains. It is set once, and once set it comes to rest of itself, and when it rests the movement stops and cannot be wound again until the turn of the year. The hand stands at the fourth day of Winemonth. The movement is at rest. The house is told when it was last set, and by whom. The vendor's account is not before us.
Beneath the base plate, in lead-white, the figure i.
- 1589 · made by Gerbrand Wett, instrument-maker, of the Rope Street, and kept in his own shop until his death in 1596
- 1596 · by descent, Lubbert Wett, merchant, his son, who kept it cased and did not wind it
- 1611 · thence the deceased, by purchase, 2,600 marks, with the case, the winding key, and the maker's list of parts
Condition: excellent. The silvering of the sun rubbed at the pole where it has been turned by hand. Two spheres re-stoppered with cork and wax. The click of the second train has been drawn back and pinned; by whom is not of record, and the pin is old and has taken a patina in the hole. The maker's list is complete and in the maker's hand. The winding key is present, and is not the maker's. The case is the original, lined in green baize, and the baize beneath the base is worn in one place, which is where the base has stood.
A claim in respect of this lot is entered by Barbara Wett, of this city, great-granddaughter of the maker, in the right of the maker's family. No writing is produced in support of it. The lot is offered without prejudice to the claim.
Readings of the Mourning Hand, Taken in the Presentation Gallery
| Day | Hour | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| 11 Sprokkel | nine in the morning, at the setting out | iv Winemonth |
| 11 Sprokkel | four in the afternoon | iv Winemonth |
| 12 Sprokkel | nine in the morning | iv Winemonth |
| 12 Sprokkel | eleven at night, at the count | iv Winemonth |
| 13 Sprokkel | nine in the morning, the gallery in fog | iv Winemonth |
| 13 Sprokkel | at the taking down of the lots | iv Winemonth |
The movement was not wound in this house, the case was not opened, and the readings were taken through the glass by two persons on each occasion, of whom one was of this house and one was not.
[in red ink] Not Gerbrand Wett's hand. The wheel-cutting is machine-struck: take a glass to the third wheel of the second train and count the flanks of the teeth, they are all one flank, and no man cutting with a file and a template makes two alike, let alone ninety. Wett cut by hand to his death; I sat in his shop in ninety-two and watched him do it. A copy of 1620 at the earliest, and this house has put four thousand marks upon it and a dead man's signature on the back plate to hold the price up. Wend. fo. 88. C.O. (Sprokkel 1637)
[in pencil] It kept the fourth of Winemonth. Ask it for the nineteenth.
The Orrery of Wett
Wondrous item, legendary (requires attunement)
While the going train is wound — ten minutes' work with the key, once in seven days — the orrery keeps the day, the month, the moon and the tides of the place where it stands, exactly, and cannot be made to read false by any means. Set upon a table for 1 hour, it tells you the true date and hour even if you have been asleep, held, enchanted, or carried elsewhere without your knowledge, and it tells you to the minute how long that lasted.
Once in a year, and never twice in a year, you can set the mourning hand. Name aloud a person you have seen with your own eyes, or whose name stands written in a document you hold, and release the click behind the calendar ring (an action). The movement runs for 1 hour and cannot be stopped, hurried, muffled, or covered. At the end of the hour the mourning hand comes to rest upon a day of the ring, and that day is the true day of that person's death, past or to come. It is never wrong. It gives a day and a month and never a year.
When the hand rests, the movement stops. It cannot be wound again by any hand until the turn of the year. While it is at rest it keeps no time and does nothing, and is a case of brass and glass worth what the brass weighs.
The setting is written down elsewhere. Within the hour, the name of the person who released the click is found written, in that person's own hand, upon some paper, plate, wall, or skin that person did not write upon. The writing is small, it is not always found, and it is not always found by the one who made it.
While you are attuned and the mourning hand stands at rest, you know without counting how many days lie between this day and the day upon the ring. You wake knowing the number. No magic can make you mistake it or forget it while you remain attuned. Ending your attunement takes the number away and leaves the day where you set it.
A day shown once is shown for good. The orrery will not answer a second time for a person it has answered for, and the hand will not be moved off a day by force: the arbor breaks first, and the second train is beyond the trade to mend.
13 · A Nest of Nine Boxes, the Ninth Empty
Nine boxes turned of pearwood and waxed, one within another, the outermost 5½ inches across and the ninth ⅝ of an inch, each lid a friction fit and each fitting only its own box. Numbered on the base in a turner's punch, one to nine. The eighth holds the ninth, and the ninth holds nothing. What is put into the ninth box is in the ninth box for one hour, and is then somewhere else.
- fitted for Neeltje Doorne, widow of a sworn surveyor of the Staple Quay, and used by her for pledge-tickets
- 1620 · pledged against a loan of 12 marks and not redeemed
- 1623 · Focke Nijs, pawnbroker, on his taking up of that business, so entered in his own book
- 1626 · thence the deceased, 60 marks, with a linen bag for the set
Condition: good; the outermost box split at the rim and glued; the lid of the fourth wanting its wax and slack; the ninth clean inside, unstained, and unmarked. In the bag with the set, three pledge-tickets of the old house, blank, and a scrap of paper with the word drawer upon it in an unknown hand.
The Nest of Nine Boxes
Wondrous item, uncommon
Twice per day you can place an object no larger than 6 inches and no heavier than 1 pound in the ninth box and close all nine (an action). One hour later the object is not in the box. It is in the place where the person who owned it before you last kept it, if that place lies within 5 miles: in the drawer, the chest, the pocket of the coat on the peg, the tray in the pledge-house. You know the direction of it and the distance to the nearest half-mile, and nothing more.
If there is no such place within 5 miles, or if the object never had an owner before you, it is in the ninth box again at the next dawn, and the day's use is spent. The boxes will not send a living thing, and they will not send anything that is being held.
Nothing prevents the sending of an object into a locked room, a sealed strongroom, or the possession of a person who does not want it. The boxes have never yet failed to know who held a thing before, however the seller wrote the ticket.
14 · The Cranck Chair
An armchair of oak, 3 feet 5 inches to the crest rail and 63 pounds, of the plain town pattern, pegged and not glued, the seat boarded, the crest carved with a rope moulding and nothing else. It is very good joinery and it will outlast the room it is put in.
The right armrest is hinged. Under the pad is a bed of harness leather, a strap of the same with a brass buckle, and a steel pawl let into the stile, which drops of itself when the pad is closed upon a wrist and holds. It is released by a lever behind the right stile, at the height of a standing man's hand, and it is not released from the seat. The left armrest is a plain armrest. The mechanism is sound and works as it was made to work. Buyers who intend the chair for a parlour are asked to know what is in the arm of it before it is set by a fire and sat in by a guest.
Provenance: made for Hendrick Cranck, executioner of this city, deceased, and kept in the outer room of his house at the Wolfsgat end, where those who came to him on business waited; thence Trijn Lemmick, his daughter, who sold her father's goods in the year after his death and kept nothing; thence the deceased. Condition: sound throughout; the seat boards renewed; the leather of the bed dark and stiff and not perished; the buckle brass and not original; two peg-heads lost from the back stretcher.
15 · A Pair of Bellows That Blow Cold
Bellows of the common forge pattern, the boards pearwood, the hide sound and re-nailed at the heel, the nozzle brass and drawn thin. Worked at a fire, the tool damps it. Provenance: Geertruyt Kaltz, widow of the armourer Volkert Rietvelt, who kept the forge in the Wolfsgat until 1630 and used the bellows, by her own account, to hold a colour on steel; thence the deceased. Condition: good, one board split along the grain and glued.
Cold Bellows
Wondrous item, common
The bellows have 3 charges and regain all of them at dawn. As an action, work them at a fire within 5 feet and expend 1 charge: a nonmagical open flame no larger than a campfire goes out, and the embers left behind are cold enough to take up in the hand at once. A torch or lamp so treated cannot be lit again for 1 minute.
The air from the nozzle is cold in any weather. Held to a wound it does nothing. Held to hot metal it fixes the colour, which is the work the tool was made for.
16 · Meerman's Northern Horn
A horn cut from the tooth of a northern whale, 26 inches on the outer curve, the mouthpiece brass, the ferrule silver, the bell mounted with a band engraved with a line of soundings in fathoms. Over open water the call carries three miles and is answered. Over land it is a poor horn and carries a street. Provenance: Egbert Meerman, whaling master of the Bruinvisch, who kept it at the boat's stern to hold a company together in fog; thence the deceased. Condition: sound, the silver band re-soldered at the join, the mouthpiece worn on one side only.
Northern Horn
Wondrous item, uncommon
While you hold the horn you know the direction of the nearest open water within 1 mile of you.
As an action you can sound the horn. Over open water it is heard clearly for 3 miles, through fog, rain, and the noise of a working harbour. Over land it is heard for 300 feet and no farther. A creature that hears it over water knows the exact direction it came from and can hold that direction for 1 hour without sight of sun, star, or shore.
The horn can be sounded as often as you like. It cannot be sounded quietly.
17 · The Sleeping Draughtsman
A seated figure of a sleeping youth, boxwood with plaster and paint, 22 inches to the crown, the eyes closed and lashed with black silk, at a small desk of ebonised pear. In the right hand a silverpoint in a holder; the left hand open on the desk, palm up, the fingers slightly curled, as a hand is that has been given something to hold. The movement is brass, of one hundred and ninety-four parts, and is signed on the back plate with the letters T P.
Wound, the figure draws for eleven minutes and stops. It draws a woman's face, three-quarter to the left, a woman of some thirty years, the hair dressed plain and no cap. The sitter is unknown. The drawing is carried to the collar and no further; the arms are begun and the work is left unfinished at the wrists.
- 1607 · made by Truwe Prillevits, clockmaker, of the Sluice Quay
- 1613 · purchased from the maker by the deceased, with a case and two spare silverpoints
Condition: excellent, the movement clean and lately oiled, the silverpoint holder renewed. In the drawer of the desk, nine sheets of the original paper, drawn upon. All nine are the same face.
[in pencil] She would be sixty-two now. He never let it draw the hands.
The Sleeping Draughtsman
Wondrous item, rare (requires attunement)
Once per day you can wind the movement (an action) and set a sheet of paper in the frame. The figure draws for 11 minutes and will not be hurried. If it is stopped, held, or moved while it draws, the sheet is spoiled and the day's use is spent.
If you place in the figure's open left hand an object that a person carried in life, the drawing is a true likeness of that person's face as it was at the hour they last held that object, whether or not you have ever seen them. A creature who knew the person recognises the likeness without a check, and a drawing so made is received as a likeness by the courts and offices of this city.
The figure does not draw hands. Every likeness ends at the wrists. No winding, oiling, or adjustment of the movement has ever altered this, and the maker's list accounts for every part.
With nothing in its left hand, it draws the woman.
18 · A Zograscope, with a Plate of the Kolkgracht
A zograscope of the usual sort: a plano-convex lens of 3 inches in a mahogany hoop, a mirror at forty-five degrees, the whole folding into its own box. With it, one plate, hand-coloured, of the Kolkgracht seen from the bridge at the Old Ground end, printed by Melis Wilsum of the Staple Quay, who prints this catalogue. In the plate the shutters of the fourteenth house stand open. Provenance: Melis Wilsum; thence the deceased. Condition: the mirror foxed along the lower edge; the plate clean, with one fold, not through the image.
19 · The Doorne Étui
An étui of green shagreen over a wooden core, 7 inches, the mounts silver and unmarked, the interior fitted in blue velvet for eleven instruments. Ten are present: two pairs of dividers, a rule, a graver, a scriber, two probes, a folding scale, a pen-knife, a small square. The eleventh bed is empty. Instruments drawn out of the case are not always the instruments the beds are cut for.
- 1611 · fitted for Neeltje Doorne, widow of a sworn surveyor of the Staple Quay
- 1620 · pledged against a loan of 40 marks
- 1621 · the pledge forfeit and not redeemed
- thence, at a sale in this city, to the deceased
Condition: excellent, the shagreen unrubbed at the hinge. The velvet of the eleventh bed is unworn and has never held anything.
A claim in respect of this lot is entered by Ilsabet Vantoc, upon a folio of a pledge-book which is itself offered in this sale, and stands referred to the Court of Wards. The lot is offered without prejudice to the claim. The vendor's account is not before us.
[in red ink] From the Haak sale of 1616, not from where she says. I saw it there on the second table, between a pair of dividers with a broken point and a quadrant with no vane, and I priced it at ninety and was outbid. She has taken a provenance from a label and the label from a pledge-clerk. C.O. (Lowmonth 1637)
The Doorne Étui
Wondrous item, rare
Once per day, as an action, you can open the étui and name aloud a nonmagical tool or instrument that would fit inside it — no longer than 7 inches, no heavier than 2 pounds. If neither you nor any creature within 5 feet of you is carrying that tool, it is in the case. It is plain work of this city, it is real, and it stays. A tool drawn out this way serves as artisan's tools or a tool kit of its kind for any check that calls for one.
The case supplies what is missing, and it makes what is missing. On the dawn after a tool is drawn out, one nonmagical instrument that you own is gone from your possession. It is not dropped, mislaid, or stolen in any manner you can trace, and no divination shows the taking.
Instruments lost in this way have afterwards been found in the pledge-houses of this city, wiped, ticketed and priced, with a folio number written on the ticket that answers to no ledger any pledge-house keeps.
20 · Seven Tuning Forks, One Silent
Seven forks, the stems turned and the tines drawn, in a beech case lined with green baize. Six sound and hold their pitch. The seventh gives no tone. Provenance: Sibbe Prillevits, clockmaker, of the Sluice Quay, deceased 1601; thence the deceased. Condition: the case hinge sprung and the lid holding by one screw; the baize of the seventh bed cut through, as though the fork had been laid in wet.
The Seven Forks, as Entered in the Earlier List
| Fork | Length | As struck |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 9 in. | a low tone, held long |
| 2 | 8 in. | true, and used for the pitch of the rest |
| 3 | 7½ in. | true |
| 4 | 6 in. | true, with a beat against the third |
| 5 | 5½ in. | true |
| 6 | 5 in. | high, and short in the sounding |
| 7 | 4 in. | no tone |
[in red ink] The tines of the seventh are filed on the inner faces only, and filed after tempering, which is why it will not speak. That is no fault of the casting; someone did it in a hurry and with a coarse float. The other six are honest work and better than the case they sit in. C.O.
The Silent Fork
Wondrous item, common
The seventh fork has 3 charges and regains all of them at dawn. As an action, strike it and set the stem to any hard surface, expending 1 charge: every unattended object of glass or glazed earthenware within 15 feet cracks. Glass held or worn by a creature is not affected, though the creature feels the stem of the fork go cold in the hand.
While the stem rests on a surface, and for 1 minute after, the other six forks cannot be sounded in the same room.
21 · The Widow's Loom
A four-shaft loom of the town pattern, oak frame, ash beams, 6 feet at the breast beam and 4 feet 2 inches deep, with one shuttle of boxwood, worn bright at the middle and not at the ends. On the cloth beam, 11 ells of plain linen, unfinished, the last four inches woven at a tension different from the rest and by a hand that did not stop to change it.
It is said to be found working at first light in a house where there is a death not yet mourned. The carrier's widow declined to be drawn further on the point and has not been pressed.
- made for Lijsbeth Wagenaar, carter's widow, of the Rope Street, who twice moved the collection of the deceased and was twice paid in kind
- 1633 · thence the deceased, in part discharge of a carriage account of 63 marks
Condition: sound and in working order, the treadle cords renewed, two ells of weft on the shuttle.
The Widow's Loom
Wondrous item, rare
While the loom stands in a building where a creature has died within the last 30 days without the rites the place keeps for its dead, it works from dusk to dawn with no weaver at the bench. By morning there are 4 ells of plain linen on the cloth beam, worth 8 marks to any draper.
One mourning band may be cut from each night's weaving. While you wear such a band, for 8 hours, you have advantage on saving throws against being frightened, and nothing can make you forget or mistake the name of the dead person the cloth was woven for. A band cut second from the same cloth is cloth and nothing more.
The loom cannot be stopped while a creature in the building is in mourning. The shed may be tied, the cords cut, the shuttle carried out of the house and locked up; by dawn the cords are whole, the shuttle is in the race, and the cloth has grown.
Each night the warp is measured to the length of a shroud for whichever creature in the building grieves most, and the measure can be read off the beam in inches by anyone who knows the trade.
22 · A Hydraulic Boy That Pours and Does Not Spill
A standing figure of a boy in a coat of enamelled tin, 15 inches, the reservoir copper and holding one pint and two gills, the tap under the left heel, the jug soldered into both hands. Set on the table and released, the figure walks four paces on a spiral track of brass, halts at a cup, and pours. It pours the measure the guest will drink, and stops, and it has not been seen to spill. Provenance: Sibbe Prillevits; thence Jorrit Haak, merchant of this city, on whose long table it stood at the head; 1631 thence the deceased, at the assignment of Haak's goods. Condition: good, the enamel of the coat chipped at the right shoulder, the track pitted where wine has stood in it.
[in pencil] It poured for three men that year. Two of them signed.
The Hydraulic Boy
Wondrous item, uncommon
Fill the reservoir — a pint and two gills, enough for eight cups. Three times a day, as an action, you can set the figure walking toward a creature within 15 feet that can see it and has a cup, glass, or bowl before it. The figure halts and pours exactly as much as that creature will in fact drink of what is offered, and nothing is spilled. If the creature will not drink at all, the figure halts and does not pour.
From what it does, you learn whether that creature intends to accept what is offered to it in the next minute: all of it, part of it, or none. It reports nothing of why, and it makes no distinction between a guest who is not thirsty and a guest who is not a guest.
23 · The Bathing Woman, a Movement of 411 Parts
A seated figure of a woman at a basin, silvered brass with a face and shoulders of enamel, 20 inches seated, the basin glass in a lead sole. Wound, she takes water in the right hand, washes the left arm from wrist to elbow, wrings the cloth over the basin, and begins again. The movement runs eleven minutes. It is of four hundred and eleven parts, so numbered in the maker's list pasted inside the base plate, and four hundred and eleven are present.
On the back of the base, behind a sliding shutter, two dials of six figures each, geared to the going train and not to the figure. The first counts the persons who have looked at her while she ran. The second counts the times they looked. Both were set to nought before the plates for this catalogue were drawn, and both are entered in the day-book at each reading.
- of Sibbe Prillevits, so described in the earlier list
- 1614 · Duifje Stoevel, lace-dealer of the Kolkgracht, by purchase
- 1619 · thence the deceased
Condition: excellent, the silvering rubbed at the right shoulder where the arm passes, the water-cloth modern and of no account.
[in red ink] Not Sibbe's work. The click-spring is filed left-handed and Sibbe was not. Her girl was. Wend. fo. 112. The earlier list was made by a man who could not tell a click from a detent, and this house has copied him out fair for nine hundred marks. C.O.
The Bathing Woman
Wondrous item, rare
The movement has 3 windings and regains all of them at dawn. Winding it is an action; it then runs for 11 minutes and cannot be muffled, stopped, or set to run slow. The sound it makes is the sound of water in a basin, and carries as far.
While it runs, it counts. When it stops, the first dial reads the number of separate creatures that saw the figure while it ran — including creatures that were invisible, hidden, disguised, or watching from outside the room, through a window, or by any scrying sensor. The second dial reads the number of separate occasions on which it was seen.
The count is exact and it is useless as evidence: it does not say who, or where, or when in the eleven minutes. It counts reflections in a glass as watchers. It counts painted eyes. It has, on one occasion in this hall, counted seven when six persons stood in the room, and the movement was afterwards found clean and complete.
Notice, Presentation Gallery
The automata are wound by the porter at the half-hour and not otherwise. Buyers are asked not to wind them, and not to set coin, glass, or the hand upon the tracks. Winding keys are held at the table and are entered in the day-book against the name of the person who asks for them.
Lot 23 will be wound once in the morning and once after the noon bell. The gallery is asked to stand clear of the basin, and to leave the shutter at the back of the base closed.
24 · Sperwer's Hood and Jesses
A falcon's hood of red leather blocked on a wooden form, 3 inches at the crown, the braces sound, the plume a tuft of heron. With it a pair of jesses, a brass swivel, and a leash of plaited silk 26 inches long. Provenance: Warmond Sperwer, falconer of the Chamber, deceased 1618; thence the deceased. Condition: hood sound and the braces supple; the jesses re-sewn.
[in red ink] The jesses have been re-sewn twice, the second time with silk where linen was. The hood is the falconer's own: it was blocked wet on the form and you can see the grain of the form inside it, which no copyist troubles to do. Mend the leash before some fool of a buyer flies it over the Kolkgracht. C.O.
Sperwer's Hood
Wondrous item, uncommon
As an action you can set the hood on a willing Beast of Small size or smaller. For the next 8 hours, that beast knows the way back to your hand from as far as 10 miles, over water, in fog, and in the dark, and holds that course without training or command. It cannot be called, lured, baited, or driven off the course; a creature that tries to take it must succeed on a DC 15 Wisdom (Animal Handling) check, or the beast slips the hand and goes on.
A hooded beast will carry a written message or an object of up to 1 pound and will not give it up on the way. The hood comes off at the hand that put it on, and at no other.
25 · A Case of Sixty Glass Eyes
Sixty eyes in a fitted tray, each bedded in wool, the irides brown, grey and blue, four of them matched pairs. Fifty-nine are glass. The sixtieth, of the last bed of the third row, is not glass: it is of a material not determined, warmer to the hand than its neighbours and heavier by two drachms. Provenance: Aefke Duym, apothecary of the Rope Street; thence the deceased. Condition: the tray water-marked at one corner; the sixtieth lies loose beside its bed and has not been set back into it.
26 · The Pigeon Clock of Ebbe Vlieger
A wall clock in a pine case, 14 inches, the dial paper on board, the hands brass. Above the dial a small door, and behind the door a bird of turned horn on a wire. The door opens before a bird comes in. Provenance: Ebbe Vlieger, pigeon-keeper at the Customs Quay, whose lofts carried the corn prices inland and back; thence the deceased. Condition: going, and keeping time to a minute in the day; the strike disconnected; the little door stiff on its pin and to be eased with a feather, not with oil.
The Pigeon Clock
Wondrous item, common
When a bird carrying a written message comes within 1 mile of the clock and is flying toward it, the small door opens and the horn bird comes out on its wire. The door opens as long before the bird's arrival as the bird needs to cover the ground, up to 1 hour, and stays open until the bird arrives or turns aside. The bird on the wire points the quarter the message is coming from, not the degree.
It does not open for a letter carried by a person, or by a beast that walks. It has never opened for a message that was not written down.
27 · A Lantern with a Shutter of Horn
A hand lantern of brass, 11 inches to the ring, burning tallow like any other, with a bull's-eye of glass on one face and, on the face opposite, a leaf of horn scraped thin and pressed by Boudewijn Bril, spectacle-maker of the Staple Quay, whose mark is punched at the corner of the frame. With the glass to the front it is a lantern and a good one. With the horn shutter opened, the light it throws is an hour behind the room.
- the horn leaf scraped and pressed by Boudewijn Bril, spectacle-maker
- 1624 · Rutger Nack, clerk of the customs quay, by purchase from the maker's widow
- 1630 · thence the deceased
Condition: good, the brass dented at the base and the ring re-brazed. The horn leaf is cracked across one corner and the crack stopped with a copper rivet, which shows in the light as a dark point that does not move. A stub of tallow stands in the socket, burned to 1 inch.
[in pencil] Hold it up in the strongroom. Count the keys on the ring, not the keys in the drawer.
The Horn-Shuttered Lantern
Wondrous item, rare (requires attunement)
The lantern has 3 charges and regains all of them at dawn. It must have a lit candle in it to work at all. As an action you can open the horn shutter and expend 1 charge. For 1 minute the lantern sheds light in a 20-foot radius, and in that light you see what stood in the lit place one hour ago: creatures and things, pale and without colour, moving as they moved, making no sound.
You see nothing of the present in that light. While the shutter is open, creatures and objects now in the area are lightly obscured to you, and you have disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight.
What the light shows cannot be touched, spoken to, or turned aside. A thing that was carried through the area an hour ago is shown crossing it and is not followed out. A creature that was invisible an hour ago is invisible in the light. Any other creature that can see the light sees the same hour you do.
Closing the shutter ends the effect early. The lantern shows no other interval than the hour. The interval has been tried against a clock, in this hall, and it does not move.
28 · The Small Sluice, a Working Model
A working model of the sluice gate of this city at one twenty-fourth, the basin 31 inches long and 14 inches across, glass in an oak curb, the walls lead, the gate leaves lead on brass pins, the winding gear brass and complete to the pawl and the drop-chain. Water may be let in at the head and drawn off at the foot, and the model takes it and returns it as the sluice does, to the fall of an inch in the hour.
Every part works. The gate is shut and does not open. The pawl lifts, the barrel turns, the chain takes up its slack and comes hard, and the leaves stay as they are. The leaves have been off their pins twice, for cleaning, and both times they were shut when they came off and shut when they went back.
- made for the office of the Waterbailiff in the time of Wolter Slecht, and used there in the hearing of 1619 upon the tides at the Sluice Basin
- thence removed from that office, no order for its removal being of record
- thence the deceased
Condition: sound; the basin glass clouded at the head end where the water enters; the lead of the walls bright along the top where it has been handled. Offered with the office copy of the tide table it was set to, foxed, and a brass funnel.
End of the first day's sale. Payment is taken at the table before the room is cleared; lots left in the hall lie at the buyer's charge and risk. The lots of the second day are shown in the gallery from eight, and the candles are sealed at ten.