The Emblem Shelf
The Hourglass and the Skull
A life measured against a small glass of falling sand.
- Work
- from a memento mori emblem book
- Maker
- Engraver unknown
- Date
- c. 1650
- Source
- Memento mori emblem, 17th c. · scan: Wikimedia Commons
Format
The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source plate — yours to print, study, and explore.
Size
$29.00
The story
A skull rests beside an hourglass, the sand half run — the plainest of memento mori, the reminder to 'remember you must die' that ran through European art for centuries. Emblems like this one, printed in the seventeenth century, paired the skull with running sand, a guttering candle, or a wilting flower to fix a single lesson in the eye: time passes, and passes evenly, whoever you are. It is not a morbid image so much as a steadying one — the whole of a life measured against a small glass of falling sand. Hung on a wall, it did the quiet work such pictures were made for: it kept count.
See it on your wall
The plate, in your home
The Hourglass and the Skull printed large and framed, hung in rooms like yours. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.
About this reproduction
- A faithful reproduction of a public-domain plate — from a memento mori emblem book (1650), held by Memento mori emblem, 17th c. · scan: Wikimedia Commons. The work was published before 1931 and is centuries out of copyright.
- Printed to order on 200gsm EMA matte art paper; framed pieces sit behind acrylic, no mat.
- Color-managed to the source scan; we correct nothing and invent nothing.
- Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed pieces ship flat-packed).
- If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.
Why our plates cost more than a poster: we print from the highest-resolution scans available, at sizes where the engraving itself becomes visible — the emblem line, the letterpress bite, the registration of colour — on stock made to outlive its owner.
