Atelier Tournesol. Goals
To promote the use and preservation of sundials:
Workshops to restore sundials
- gnomonics for solar time
- restoration techniques to preserve the original drawings on the walls.
Creating new modern sundials :
- gnomonic calculations and pictural creation for each sundial.
- adaptation to the architecture and to the landscape of the site.
Computerized survey of the sundials of regions.
- Les Hautes Alpes in 1991
- Isere (in progress)
Creation of "sundials itineraries"
Articles, booklets, exhibitions of this scientific and artistic heritage.
Work with school children
Visits.
Public showing of slides "Les horlogers du soleil" (the watchmakers of the sun.)
Efforts to heighten people's awareness of the need to protect this heritage, efforts directed to individuals, associations and public authorities.
Looking for archives and documents on the history of oldi nventories and old sundials.
Founded in 1986 and committed to the preservation of old sundials, l'Atelier Tournesol had the idea of and completed between 1987 and 1991 a catalogue of the old sundials in the Hautes Alpes. It made people aware of this heritage heretofore neglected in this area, and it stimulated touristic activity with the "Sundials itinerary" and it prompted the creation of various preservation measures.
Some 40 sundials have been recorded in the Supplementary Survey of historic buildings made by the COREPHAE.
Based in Isere (France), l'Atelier Tournesol has also been working since its foundation for the preservation of local sundials.
Atelier Tournesol is now completing a computerized data-bank in Isere as it has been done in the Hautes Alpes.
Competitions. In 1989 L'Atelier Tournesol was awarded the second prize (in the restoration category) in the first competition organized by the Italian National Society of Astronomy and the Science Museum of Brescia (Italy) for the restoration of two sundials made in 1718 in Puy St Vincent in the Hautes-Alpes (France).
-1994 first prize for the third competition (in the creation category) for the analemmatic sundial in Meylan (Isère. France).
Thanks to Michèle Accolla who performed this translation