2020 Essays

Powder for Hourglasses

Pope, Stephanie

The hourglass had symbolic valences in early modern culture which, in the historiography, have often eclipsed its practical aspects, such as those involved in creating “powder for hourglasses” from lead and salt as described on fol. 10r of Ms. Fr. 640. This essay situates the entry among other medieval and early modern recipes for hourglass powder, which make use of a variety of ingredients (including pulverized eggshells, coral, and marble “grease”) and appear in texts ranging from fourteenth-century marital instructions to an eighteenth-century guide to maritime navigation. The entry in Ms. Fr. 640 sheds light on the fluidity between domestic and urban space in early modern Europe, the frugal and experimental quality of the domestic setting in this period, and even the material referents of certain metaphors in early modern religious writing.