Quality time

Shapely, elegant and mesmerising to watch, a sleek new generation of designer hourglasses is enjoying a surprise revival in our digital age

Words by Bethan Ryder

Progress is always governed by the law of opposites: polar forces tugging in contradictory directions; fast v slow. As music downloads prevail, so vinyl sales surge; as digitalisation dominates our lives, age-old crafts experience a revival. And so, just as wristwatches reach their multi-tasking technological peak, we’re falling in love all over again with the waspish curves of that ancient timepiece, the hourglass.

Believed to date back to the third century BC, when they were used by the Greeks and Romans, often to time political speeches, hourglasses became popular decorative items during the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, says Simon Andrews, International Specialist, Design, at Christie’s. “In part, this was due to the revived interest in Victoriana that paralleled modernism,” he says, “as illustrated in the 1950s interiors of Alexander Girard in the US, or later in Britain by Terence Conran, who used them as decorative accents in his Habitat catalogues. Similarly, a renewed interest in these arcane timepieces might be seen as a reaction against the precision timekeeping of our modern world.”

Fuelled in part by a renewed appreciation for mouthblown glass objects, the past decade has seen our fascination gather steam. In 2011, superstar designer Marc Newson conceived two statuesque hourglasses in Borosilicate glass for watch brand Ikepod, swapping sand for tiny gold-plated stainless-steel balls. Then, in 2015, Japanese architect Tadao Ando pushed the boundaries of hourglass design for Murano glass masters Venini with his extraordinary “Ando Time”. More recently, minimalist master Nendo freed up time with his disruptive “Variations of Time” acrylic blocks, housing coloured sand flowing through a series of chambers and cavities. Now more affordable versions are available – in a rainbow of sands and a choice of time measurements stretching from three minutes to three hours – from Dutch brand Pols Potten, Italian accessories firm Bitossi Home, and Danish brand Hay, which launched its now bestselling “Time” collection (pictured, left) in 2015.

Ancient or contemporary, hourglasses clearly have a mesmerising appeal. As life speeds up, we hanker after this emblem of slow time, which allows us to witness the passing of seconds. Small wonder it has been adopted as a symbol of the planet’s “time running out”, for cleanup-the-oceans campaigner Brodie Neill, who swapped sand for microplastic granules gathered on Tasmanian beaches for his “Capsule” design, not to mention, of course, for Extinction Rebellion’s logo. The hourglass, it seems, is a sign of the times – but thankfully a very stylish one.