Britt’s Pick: Toonz’s Diamond Hourglass Charm

By Brittany Siminitz | September 28, 2026

There are jewels that tell time, and there are jewels that represent its passing.

Toonz’s hourglass charm does the latter with elegance. Made in 18k gold with hand-carved tiger’s-eye and hand-blown glass, the miniature hourglass contains 0.76 ct. t.w. of loose round natural diamonds. Turn it over, and those diamonds tumble from one chamber to the next—a glittering three-second reminder that time waits for no one.

It is, obviously, an extremely charming thing to watch. But the concept behind those moving diamonds makes the piece even better.

“Diamonds felt almost poetic in an hourglass because a natural diamond is itself a product of extraordinary geological time,” says founder and designer Ayesha Mohammed. “It forms deep within the earth over immense timescales, and then here we are using these tiny natural diamonds to physically mark the passing of just a few seconds.”

That contrast—millions or billions of years of natural formation compressed into approximately three seconds of movement—is what elevates the charm beyond cleverness.

“I loved that contrast—something that took an almost incomprehensible amount of time for nature to create being used to measure one of the smallest units of our own lives,” the designer says. “Instead of sand disappearing quietly through the center, you see these little points of light moving through the glass. It turns the measurement of time into something precious.”

Making it work, however, was considerably more complicated than simply swapping sand for diamonds.

Mohammed wanted the piece to remain small enough to wear comfortably as a charm, which limited how long its tiny timer could run. More challenging was creating a hand-blown glass form with an internal passage precise enough to allow the diamonds to move consistently from one chamber to another.

“We went through multiple attempts before arriving at a glass form that worked,” Mohammed says. “With a conventional piece of jewelry, a tiny variation may affect the finish or fit; here, a tiny variation within the glass could affect whether the diamonds actually pass from one chamber to the other.”

The glass then had to fit securely within a handmade gold framework and individually carved tiger’s-eye components without sacrificing the delicacy of the familiar hourglass silhouette.

“There’s a strange amount of engineering hidden inside something so tiny,” the designer says, “which is part of what I love about it.”

That engineering also hints at where Toonz wants to go next. The designer describes the hourglass as the beginning of the brand’s exploration of functioning jewels, with several more pieces already in development; she even dreams of eventually enlarging the concept into a jewelry sculpture for the home capable of measuring a minute or two.

“Why does jewelry have to be static?” Mohammed asks. “Why can’t a jewel also be an object?”

It’s a question the hourglass answers rather convincingly. Because while the novelty of seeing diamonds trickle through a tiny glass chamber certainly earns that first “I’ve never seen anything like this” reaction, there’s enough craftsmanship, symbolism, and ingenuity here to warrant a much closer look.

And really, isn’t that what the best jewelry does? It makes you stop for a second. Or, in this case, three.

Top: Hourglass charm in 18k yellow gold with hand-blown glass, hand-carved tiger’s-eye, and 0.76 ct. t.w. diamonds, $13,290; Toonz