Antique Stick Barometers between £0 and £0
A stick barometer is a wall-hung mercury barometer, its long tube cased in a slim wooden trunk with a graduated register plate at the top, made to read the weather in a hall, a farmhouse or a ship's cabin.
What They Are
The form is simple: a glass tube of mercury running the length of a narrow case, a cistern at the base under a turned or bowed cover, and a register plate at the top carrying the scale and usually a vernier for fine reading. A thermometer on the trunk is very common. Almost everything in this archive is English and domestic, signed on the plate by a retailer or instrument maker and titled by town.
Mahogany is the defining timber, appearing in about a quarter of titles, with oak, rosewood and walnut behind it. The two period labels that dominate are Victorian and Georgian, so the piece you are most likely to meet on Sellingantiques is a mahogany English wall barometer of Georgian to Victorian date with a town name on the plate. London accounts for a quarter of all titles; behind it sit Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, Halifax, Norwich, Exeter and York.
Within that, a few clear groups. Georgian and Regency cases with inlay and bow fronts make up roughly a third of titles. Victorian oak and figured-timber cases, including burr walnut and carved work, account for about a quarter. Marine and sea-coast barometers, often hung in brass gimbals, are roughly one in ten. Fitzroy and storm patterns with their printed weather notes form a smaller recurring group, alongside farmers' and agricultural instruments.
Dating is loose. The dated field runs from 1700 to 1930, with 175 listings carrying a clean year, but much of the profile is expressed as period words instead, and repeated round numbers like 1750 and 1800 should be read as approximate. At the edges sit miners' barometers, twin-vernier and Fortin patterns, weather stations and Edwardian work.
What Lifts One
Case shape does more work than anything else. Bow-fronted trunks and cistern covers run to only eighteen titles in the whole archive, yet they crowd the very top of the range. Inlay pushes the same way: stringing and shell work in the late Georgian taste, chequer banding, fruitwood, boxwood, ebony, parquetry and mother-of-pearl, along with burr walnut, burr yew, flame mahogany and birds-eye maple.
A signature counts for a great deal. The upper range is dominated by pieces with a name and an address on the plate, London most of all, while entries titled simply 'Stick barometer' or 'Antique stick barometer' sit at the bottom. A provincial town name still puts a piece ahead of an anonymous one.
Date and specification account for the rest. Eighteenth-century pieces, including walnut ones, take the highest positions in the sampled range, and marine or sea-coast instruments run through the middle and upper part of it, frequently with gimbals noted. Plain flat-fronted Victorian trunks make up the working bulk below all that.
Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for stick barometers between £0 and £0, calculated from the Sellingantiques database of over a million retail prices indexed since 2003. This retail price guide relies exclusively on Sellingantiques data; no external sources or auction records are used, so the figures do not describe the wider market.
The oldest stick barometer dated on Sellingantiques is a walnut example of 1700. The latest is a miner's barometer of 1930.
Negretti & Zambra
The Antique Stick Barometers between £0 and £0 Glossary
- Register plate
- The engraved or silvered scale plate at the top of the case, where the reading is taken and where the signature and town almost always sit.
- Vernier
- A sliding scale on the register plate that lets the mercury level be read finely. A twin vernier instrument carries two of them.
- Bow front
- A case with a convex-fronted trunk or cistern cover. It appears in eighteen titles across the archive and sits at the top of the range.
- Cistern
- The mercury reservoir at the base of the tube, usually hidden under a turned or bowed cover.
- Gimbal
- Also spelt gimble in listings. The pivoting brass mount that keeps a shipboard barometer upright as the vessel moves.
- Sympiesometer
- A gas-and-liquid marine alternative to the mercury barometer, and a one-off in this archive.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is a stick barometer different from a wheel barometer?
A stick barometer reads the mercury directly against a graduated plate at the top of a long narrow case. A wheel barometer uses a round dial and a pointer.
The stick form is the older arrangement and stayed in production into the 20th century, which is why the archive spans 1700 to 1930.
What woods do these cases come in?
Mahogany dominates, at about a quarter of all titles. Oak follows, then rosewood and walnut.
Beyond those, listings throw up burr yew, burr maple, pollard oak, birds-eye maple, fruitwood, boxwood and ebonised work, along with parquetry and mother-of-pearl inlay on the more decorated Georgian cases.
Why do so many carry a town name?
The register plate was signed by the retailer or instrument maker who supplied it, and the town went on with the name.
London accounts for a quarter of titles. The provincial signatures behind it are varied: Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Halifax, Norwich, Exeter, York, Hull, Preston, Derby, Whitehaven, Bath, Bristol, Taunton, Shrewsbury and Askrigg all appear.
What is an Admiral Fitzroy barometer?
A later pattern that carries printed weather notes on the plate, telling the reader what a rising or falling column meant. Carved oak cases are common on them.
They turn up throughout the archive as a small but recurring group, alongside farmers', agricultural and long-range instruments.
Are marine stick barometers common?
Marine and sea-coast examples make up roughly one in ten listings, so they turn up regularly rather than occasionally.
They were made for shipboard or coastal use and are frequently noted as gimballed, hung in a brass mount that keeps the tube upright. Ships' and Scottish ships' patterns both appear.
How often do these come up for sale?
About thirty-one are listed on Sellingantiques in a year, and fifty-one different dealers have handled one.
That spread means the form sits across the trade generally rather than with a handful of specialists.
Non-British pieces are the scarcest thing in the archive: a French barometer, an ebonised example from Milan and one signed in Dublin are effectively the whole of it.