Home > Hour Glass. Sand Hour Glass. Wood Hour Glass
Hour Glass. Sand Hour Glass. Wood Hour Glass
As sands through the hour glass…
Enjoying the beauty of a wood hourglass
For most people, our exposure to an hour glass is limited to the kind that comes with board games or is used as egg timers. We forget how beautiful a finely crafted wood hourglass can be, and how functional it is as well.
Hour glasses, sometimes called sandglass, sand clock or sand timers, are devices used to measure time. An hour glass is made of two glass bulbs placed directly above one another with a very narrow opening connecting the two bulbs. One of the bulbs is filled with fine sand. The sand flows through the narrow opening or narrow tube into the bottom bulb. The rate that the sand flows completely from the top bulb to the bottom bulb is the amount of time measured.
The name “hour glass” was derived because a common amount of time for the sand to run out is 60 minutes or an hour. When the sand has completely run into the bottom bulb, the hour glass is inverted and the measurement begins again. There are a number of factors that can affect the total running time of the hour glass, including the size of the bulbs, the volume of the sand, and the width of the opening.
It’s amazing to realize that such an ancient device is still in use today. Hour glasses are thought to have been invented in the middle of the 3rd century, perhaps in Alexandria. It’s thought that hour glasses became essential equipment at the time of the 11th century, when used in conjunction with a magnetic compass for navigation. In fact, a wood hourglass was listed as part of essential ship equipment and one of the first recorded instances of an hour glass is from a sales receipt for an English ship dating back to 1345.
Of course, some of the finest glass blowers in the world come from Venice, and Venice has a notable history of creating beautiful wood hourglass. With the elegant glass blown bells, and high quality wood construction, some of the Italian wood hourglasses are beautiful collector’s items.
Hour glasses do not measure only 60 minute periods. You can find an hour glass for 60 minutes, 45, 30, 15, 5, 3 or 1 minute. Some of the older wood hour glasses used several different calibrated hour glasses in one frame – so the measurement of time could be broken down into further increments.
Today, we’ve relegated the use of an hour glass to board games or egg timers. However, these devices are so incredible simple, yet are almost hypnotic. There’s something irresistible about watching the sand move from one globe to the other. Antique hour glasses have become highly collectable objects, and many collector searches for wood hourglass of all shapes, sizes and running time.
If your budget doesn’t run towards the expense of some of the antique hour glass, you can find a number of beautiful reproductions. The wood hourglass is crafted with the same skill and handiwork of old. It makes for a beautiful accessory in a home or office, something that draws people attention and is a great conversation piece. You’ll find them an almost irresistible item – someone always inverts them to start the process all over again. Shop for hourglasses here.
