Gold and garnet powder hourglass pendant “Chronos”

Description

Exceptional 18-carat gold pendant representing an hourglass with a gold structure formed by two bases and three twisted pillars surmounted by a ring and a mobile bail. In its center, an hourglass works in glass sprinkled with garnet powder for a most striking visual effect. A remarkable piece to wear as a collector’s item as well as a symbolic piece of jewelry.
Length: 2.5cm with bail, 2cm without.
Width: 1cm
Weight: 3.88g
This unique piece had a previous life in France.

The story: The hourglass pendant, a precious miniature containing a little sand or colored powder, symbolizes the passing of time, the fragility of the moment and the value of each moment. Appearing in jewelry as early as the nineteenth century, this shape found a particular echo in the 1940s, when the hourglass was rediscovered as an introspective talisman, sometimes set with gold and worn as a piece of jewelry for memory or protection. The red sand, often made from crushed garnet, evokes blood, love, and the inexorable passage of time. Refined and poetic, the hourglass pendant blends symbolic function with artisanal delicacy, capturing the ephemeral in an eternal object.