Hands of Time: A Watchmaker’s History

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)