Hands of Time: A Watchmaker's History

by Rebecca Struthers Narrated by Anna Ploszajski

Overview

""A hugely entertaining achievement."" -Esquire

“An engaging survey through a period of intellectual history that reveals as much about people who wear watches as the objects on their wrists."" - Wall Street Journal

""As impeccably crafted and precisely engineered as any of the watches on which the author has worked so lovingly over the years, this book is a joy to behold and a wonder to enjoy.” -Simon Winchester, author of The Perfectionists and Land

An award-winning watchmaker-one of the few practicing the art in the world today-chronicles the invention of time through the centuries-long story of one of mankind's most profound technological achievements: the watch.

Timepieces have long accompanied us on our travels, from the depths of the oceans to the summit of Everest, the ice of the arctic to the sands of the deserts, outer space to the surface of the moon. The watch has sculpted the social and economic development of modern society; it is an object that, when disassembled, can give us new insights both into the motivations of inventors and craftsmen of the past, and, into the lives of the people who treasured them.

Hands of Time*is a journey through watchmaking history, from the earliest attempts at time-keeping, to the breakthrough in engineering that gave us the first watch, to today - where the timepieces hold cultural and historical significance beyond what its first creators could have imagined. Acclaimed watchmaker Rebecca Struthers uses the most important watches throughout history to explore their attendant paradigm shifts in how we think about time, indeed how we think about our own humanity. From an up-close look at the birth of the fakes and forgeries industry which marked the watch as a valuable commodity, to the watches that helped us navigate trade expeditions, she reveals how these instruments have shaped how we build and then consequently make our way through the world.

A fusion of art and science, history and social commentary, this fascinating work, told in Struthers's lively voice and illustrated with custom line drawings by her husband and fellow watchmaker Craig, is filled with her personal observations as an expert watchmaker-one of the few remaining at work in the world today. Horology is a vast subject-the “study of time.” This compelling history offers a fresh take, exploring not only these watches within their time, but the role they played in human development and the impact they had on the people who treasured them.*

Editorial Reviews

July 2023 - AudioFile

Narrator Anna Ploszajski exudes the passion of master watchmaker and author Rebecca Struthers, who expounds upon horology, the study and measurement of time and the art of making clocks and watches. From water clocks, sundials, and hourglasses to church clocks, from pocket watches to wristwatches, listeners will learn about gears, springs, and all the things that make watches tick from someone who crafts the devices by hand. Ploszajski's crisp, polished tones are perfect for this history of chronometers from their very beginnings to their uses for organizing work and social time, as scientific instruments, and as essential fashion accessories. After listening to this fascinating history, the listener will never look at a timepiece the same way again. M.B.K. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

04/10/2023

Watchmaker and antiquarian horologist Struthers debuts with a vivid history of her craft. Conveying the painstaking nature of a watchmaker’s work, Struthers describes how she and her husband, Craig, spend between six months and six years making a new watch, often from salvaged parts, using equipment that dates to the 19th century. Her comprehensive history traces the evolution of timekeeping devices from sundials in ancient Egypt to the “Deep Space Atomic Clock,” which is accurate to a deviation of less than two nanoseconds a day. Struthers effectively links these changing technologies to changing conceptions of time that shaped human society, noting, for example, that the proliferation of pocket watches in 18th-century England helped make the “specific time of an event... a more and more common part of witnesses’ testimonies in crime reports.” Elsewhere, Struthers delves into the intriguing story of “the Mona Lisa of watches,” which was commissioned as a gift for Marie Antoinette in 1783, stolen from a Jerusalem museum in 1983, and recovered in 2006 after the thief made a deathbed confession to his wife. Heartfelt and deeply knowledgeable, this is an elegant tribute to a timeless art form. (June)

From the Publisher

"Hands of Time is smart, curious, digressive and brisk: an engaging survey through a period of intellectual history that reveals as much about people who wear watches as the objects on their wrists." — Wall Street Journal

"There is a tendency for watch writing to be a closed shop – to get bogged down in the technicalities of watches and watches alone. Hands of Time puts them into cultural and historical context, combines that with the story of Rebecca’s singular career, and assembles the parts against a backdrop of the whole history of time. It’s also a really fun read." — Esquire

"Skillfully moving between the minuscule world of watchmaking and the sweep of history, Hands of Time is an enlightening study of “the closest relationship we had with a machine” before the advent of mobile phones. It charts humanity’s shifting relationship with time, while showing that watches have always connoted more than time-telling." — The Economist

"Full of tales of royal intrigue and social history, it charts the story of watchmaking through the centuries and reflects on how time affects us all."
— Vogue

"Watchmaker and antiquarian horologist Struthers debuts with a vivid history of her craft.... Heartfelt and deeply knowledgeable, this is an elegant tribute to a timeless art form." — Publishers Weekly

"A beautiful story about beautiful things from someone who knows everything there is to know about the field." — Kirkus Reviews

"Each chapter of her exquisitely crafted history explores a pivotal moment in watchmaking from the past 500 years." — Nature

"As impeccably crafted and precisely engineered as any of the watches on which the author has worked so lovingly over the years, this book is a joy to behold and a wonder to enjoy.” — Simon Winchester, author of The Perfectionists and Land

“An intensely personal, finely-tuned meditation on making and time-keeping. This is a beautiful book." — Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes

“From 40,000 year old bone etchings, through the first tick-tock and into the nanoscale atomic world of 21st century clocks, Hands of Time is a meticulously written and captivating history. Struthers brings her unique perspective as artisan and engineer to explore both the evolution of mechanisms and the complicated ways in which timekeeping has changed human life: the more we measure this intangible cosmic property, the more precious it becomes.” — Rebecca Wragg Sykes, author of Kindred

“As an engineer I was enthralled by the intricate mechanisms Dr. Struthers brings to life so vividly. But what really struck me is her personal journey in horology, and her fascinating stories of how timepieces affected society and culture, ultimately shaping our modern lives.” — Roma Agrawal, author of How Was That Built?

“As exquisitely-crafted as a Georgian pocket-watch, this fascinating book weaves the threads of personal memoir with the story of a profession that has until now been almost entirely overlooked. Through the lens of watch-making, a new understanding of our world history emerges. Beautifully written and endlessly fascinating, it feels like this was a story waiting to be written.” — Tracy Borman, author of Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I

“Rebecca Struthers dismantles and reassembles time as she would an antique pocket watch. Beautiful, bewitching and brilliant.” — Lara Maiklem, author of Mudlarking: Lost and Found on the River Thames

"An exquisite book, as beautifully put together as one of the watches whose mechanisms Rebecca describes." — Stephen Fry

“An absolutely gorgeous book about craft, time and history. Hands of Time really captures what it means to be a craftsperson and why it matters. It blew my socks off.” — Jay Blades

"This is a work of staggering complexity and bewildering economy – highly deserving of the time you give it." — Telegraph (UK)

"Every page glitters with details of her experience and the people she has learned from. The book is evidence of a lifelong labor of love, and reading it is time well spent." — The Spectator

"Dr.Struthers serves up a gripping history of timekeeping that starts with the personal, but then embarks upon a journey spanning centuries of modern humanity, examining how timepieces have shaped us – not just in service to our quotidian lives, but politically and economically, too. With a scope that reaches from prehistoric 40,000-year-old bone etchings recording lunar cycles to the Dutch horological “forgeries” of her thesis, it is all addressed with a lightness of touch that has seen Dr. Struthers’ debut scoring “Book of the Week” on BBC Radio 4’." — Mr Porter

AudioFile - JULY 2023

Narrator Anna Ploszajski exudes the passion of master watchmaker and author Rebecca Struthers, who expounds upon horology, the study and measurement of time and the art of making clocks and watches. From water clocks, sundials, and hourglasses to church clocks, from pocket watches to wristwatches, listeners will learn about gears, springs, and all the things that make watches tick from someone who crafts the devices by hand. Ploszajski's crisp, polished tones are perfect for this history of chronometers from their very beginnings to their uses for organizing work and social time, as scientific instruments, and as essential fashion accessories. After listening to this fascinating history, the listener will never look at a timepiece the same way again. M.B.K. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2023-03-14
An acclaimed expert provides a striking account of watches, their history, and their social impact.

“Watches not only measure time, they are a manifestation of time—signifiers of the most precious thing we have,” writes Struthers. The first watchmaker in British history to earn a doctorate in antiquarian horology, the study of time and timepieces, the author has devoted her life to them. Her debut book is a fascinating, charming examination, and Struthers ably melds the larger story with her own. She initially trained as a jeweler and silversmith, and before that, she was intrigued by forensics. All these came together when she encountered watchmaking, and she fell in love with the complexity and precision of the discipline. She takes a tour through the evolution of watches, noting that the first were produced in the early 16th century. Some watches constructed hundreds of years ago still work perfectly, with little maintenance; few machines can make comparable claims. The book has plenty of stories and colorful characters, making for a remarkable narrative. For a while, it looked as if mechanical watches would become extinct under pressure from digital technology, but the past decade has seen a new generation emerge as high-prestige items, and most of them are superb objects. Struthers provides a glossary as well as an appendix on how to repair a watch, and her expertise and passion for her subject shine through. She has always been aware of the passage of time, but it became an acute concern when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The prognosis is good, but it gave her a fresh perspective on her work. “We all measure our lives in moments of time, and the memories that accompany them,” she writes. “Watches, which tell the time for us as they did for those before us, provide a constant in those memories.”

A beautiful story about beautiful things from someone who knows everything there is to know about the field.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940176728002
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	06/13/2023
Edition description:	Unabridged

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