This object made by Robert Marichy - a wood turner in Arinthod in the Jura department - looks like an armillary sphere, an instrument used in astronomy to model the celestial sphere at the time of the geocentric system when the earth was considered the center of the Universe. The armillary spheres were then used to show the apparent movement of the stars around the Earth as well as the ecliptic i.e. the great circle representing the annual trajectory of the Sun as seen from Earth.