Nendo redesigns the hourglass

Nendo, redesigner of chocolates, pillows, and plenty of other perfectly adequate everyday goods, is now in the business of redesigning timepieces. Hourglasses, to be exact.

The Japanese design studio created a series of hourglasses whose amorphous chambers and passageways play with your perception of time, while literally changing the speed and angle of the flow of sand. The cavities of timepiece are extruded from blocks of transparent acrylic, giving them the appearance of air holes in a piece of ice.

“The concept of this collection could be said to be designing time itself,” said Nendo.

One design, Time Divided, spreads five-minutes-worth of sand between two cavities. Another, Time Inverted, lasts two minutes when placed at one orientation and just one minute when flipped over.

While these reimagined hourglasses aren’t exactly functional (unless you’re trying to time a soft-boiled egg or a plank), they are awfully pretty to look at.

Via: Dezeen