Desk Orrery
Seven bodies, eight-day spring reserve, 420 mm across.
No. 01 / Sol System
London & Northumberland · Since 2011
The sky,
held in hand.
Hollis & Vane makes singular mechanical orreries: brass, stone and mathematics made tangible for a room you return to slowly.
Enter the workshopDrag to turn the armillary
01 — The proposition
A planetary clock made for the pace of a human room.
We are Elian Hollis, who cuts the gear trains, and Mara Vane, who turns stone and finishes each surface. We make no catalogue pieces. Every orrery begins with a conversation about a library, an observatory, a house by the sea—and who will wind it.
The movement is not a model of the solar system so much as a companion to it. The planets retain their proper relations: Mercury outruns Earth, Mars lingers, Jupiter almost refuses to move. The mechanism earns its quiet.
A commission begins
With the
room.
We visit when possible. Light, shelf depth, the grain of a desk, and the sound a case should make when it is opened are all part of the brief.
Library Orrery
Wall-facing dial, lunar phase, hand-cut chapter ring.
Observatory Table
Custom ephemeris, sidereal day indication, 1.2 m span.
Memorial Movement
One chosen date held in the calendar, discreetly and forever.
02 — Matter & finish
Nothing
merely golden.
Every material earns its place by how it takes light, holds an edge, and changes with a hand near it.
Brass
Our rings are individually spun, then engraved only after the movement is adjusted. We leave the tool marks where they make the light more interesting.
Stone
Black limestone for the large bodies; serpentine for the small, green worlds. The material makes each planet feel older than its mechanism.
Glass
There is one clear plane in every orrery: a restrained map of declination, printed in oxide ink and meant to disappear until you need it.
03 — At the bench
One movement.
Hundreds of decisions.
There are precise ratios, and then there are the many decisions that live around precision: a tooth profile softened by half a degree; a pivot made to sing less; a planet placed where a hand may follow it without striking another orbit.
Map the desired sky
We establish the bodies, scale, time base and the view from which the owner will most often meet the piece.
Cut the ratios
Elian cuts each brass wheel and pinion, then runs the bare train for a week before a ring is added.
Give weight to bodies
Mara turns, hand-finishes and balances every sphere so a planet feels substantial without burdening its arm.
Listen and regulate
The finished orrery remains in the workshop for fourteen nights. We correct what the room, not the drawing, tells us.
04 — Regulation record
A thousand days, under glass.
Before a movement is allowed to leave, we run its astronomical ratios against a long mechanical record. Move through the test to watch the planets keep their different appointments.
Bench test / orbital plate
Day 146 / 1,000
Mercury has made one complete circuit; Jupiter has barely moved.
Workshop ledger / 2026
We make six a year.
Two places remain.
This is deliberate. The work needs long silences between decisions, and a movement needs time running alone before it belongs to anyone else. Current lead time is eleven to fourteen months.
Current seriesVane No. 12Black limestone / solar
Bench timeAug—OctMovement regulation
Next openingNovemberInitial drawings
Write tothe benchhello@hollisandvane.com
An initial note is enough
Tell us where
the sky will sit.
Include a photograph of the intended room if you have one. We will reply ourselves, usually from the bench, within three working days.
Begin a conversation