Antique hourglass with polychrome paint
7"H x 4"W
This Antique timer is painted green, yellow and red; early 19th c. 7" tall with 4 hand-turned wood pillars. This fine hourglass is a 60-minute red sand timer (professional restoration on glass ampule). By the first half of the 14th c, sand-glass was a commonly known form of time-keeping in Italy. It's thought that sandglass was invented for the distance travelled by ship.

Hourglass (2)
7"H x 4"W
By the 16th c, other uses were common, e.g., preachers to gauge the length of a sermon, tradesmen to count the hours of their work and for cooking times. The sand-glass comes in all sizes: Columbus used a half-hour timer when sailing. Sand may be constructed from lead, tin, black marble dust, pulverized eggshell and white sand mixed with red ochre pigment, as this one, to make red sand.