A bronze figural sundial titled “Boy with Spider”  by Willard Dryden Paddock (American, 1873-1956), the boy sitting with ankles crossed, holding a scroll in his lap, the scroll marked with coordinates, months, dates, and hours related to its function as a working sundial, the boy holding aloft a twig in his proper right hand from which originally hung a spider on a bronze thread, the thread serving as the sundial’s gnomon (the thread and the spider now lost, the twig long ago replaced), the whole upon an oval integral base, American, 1916-1918. 



Willard Dryden Paddock was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1873. He studied at the Pratt Institute and was a pupil of sculptor Herbert Adams (1858-1945). Paddock was a member of the National Sculpture Society, the Allied Artists of America, the Guild of New York Artists, and the New York Architectural League. He exhibited two works at the influential Exhibition of American Sculpture that was sponsored by Archer Huntington (18780-1955) and organized by the National Sculpture Society. Paddock was known primarily for his memorials, including a memorial to Noah Webster on the campus of Amherst College, but also produced numerous busts, sundials, figures, fountains, and statuettes.