The Constellations of the Northern Sky

The artwork

On the left, between Boötes and Virgo, a long lock of hair hangs down, knotted at the end: it is Coma Berenices, Berenice's Hair, a constellation born of a haircut. You receive it printed on handmade Amalfi paper, in a handmade frame.

• The northern sky with the figures of the constellations, hand-coloured.
• In the large format, in a bedroom or above a sofa, it brings the stars home.
• A gift for an anniversary or for anyone who looks for the stars.

Berenice II, queen of Egypt, had promised her long hair to the gods if her husband, Ptolemy III, came back safe and sound from the war in Syria. She cut it and laid it in a temple; according to Hyginus, by the next morning it was gone. The court astronomer, Conon of Samos, announced that Aphrodite had carried it up among the stars, and the poet Callimachus wrote verses about it that Catullus, two centuries later, translated into Latin: the name Coma Berenices comes from him. Scholars place the story around 245 BC; since the sixteenth century mapmakers have drawn it as a constellation of its own.

The plate, “Hemisphaerium Coeli Boreale”, is by Johann Gabriel Doppelmayr, who signs himself in the cartouche as public professor of mathematics and member of the Leopoldina Academy and the Royal Prussian Society. It comes from his Atlas Coelestis, published in Nuremberg by the heirs of Johann Baptist Homann in 1742: thirty astronomical plates, gathered from copperplates engraved over several decades. This one gives the star positions calculated for 1730, and the columns at the sides list the coordinates of every star; in the corners, cherubs handle instruments for measuring the sky. Coloured by hand, the original is kept in the David Rumsey Map Collection.

It is a gift for an anniversary, or for anyone who looks for the stars from the balcony on summer nights, to hang in a bedroom or above the sofa. And Berenice's Hair, on the left, still hangs among the stars.

Unique quality material

Print on handmade Amalfi paper
Sheet size: 40 x 60 cm (15.7 x 23.6 in)
With frame: 42 x 62 cm (16.5 x 24.4 in)
Material: artwork printed on very fine handmade Amalfi paper with deckled edges
Frame: dark brown with gold fillet, handmade, with glass