Time Museum in Tehran |
By
Heidi Noroozy
Tucked
away on a shady lane in the Zafaranieh district of North Tehran stands a wedding
cake of a mansion, painted blue with intricate white trim. Once the home of
Hossein Khodadad, a wealthy merchant who made a fortune in shipping and
textiles, the estate is now a museum dedicated to that most elusive of
subjects: time.
Through
the ages, people have devised ingenious ways to measure and keep track of time,
from sundials to electronic clocks. When I think of the many practical
instruments that we use divide the day into hours, minutes, and seconds, the
first thing that comes to mind is the good old tick-tock. The museum’s
designers must have been thinking along the same lines, since they filled Mr.
Khodadad’s mansion with mechanical timepieces of all types. The collection
includes cuckoo clocks hanging on the walls and pendulum clocks with their
system of weights and chains housed in plain wooden cases. Others are so ornate
they’d be right at home in a European palace—clocks set into porcelain vases,
paired with bronze sculptures, and mounted on inlay cabinets.
Many
of the exhibits are noteworthy because of their owners, such as the timepiece
that once belonged to Fath Ali Shah Qajar, who ruled Iran from 1797 to 1834.
Others are gimmicky—a tiny clock set into a silver cigarette lighter.
My
favorite exhibit in this unusual museum is the Evolution of Time display in the
garden surrounding the mansion. It contains replicas of unusual devices from
different historical periods and cultures. Here is a selection:
A
Sumerian sundial based on a design that is 6,000 years old. The Sumerians, who
occupied a part of Mesopotamia now located in southern Iraq, were among the
first people to use sundials to track time.
This
rather crude clepsydra, or water clock, is a timepiece that measures time by the
regulated flow of water into and out of a vessel, where the amount of liquid is
then measured.
A
candle clock has hour markings set into the wax that show the passage of time
as the candle burns down.
Chinese
fire clocks like this dragon-shaped one work by lighting a stick of incense
strapped to the dragon’s back. As the incense burns, the flame breaks threads
connected to balls that drop onto a sounding board and mark the hour.
A
most unusual piece is this sundial in the shape of a book. The pages mark the
hours, and each sheet contains numbers that represent the minutes. The book’s
angle is adjusted according to the position of the sun, and the shadow cast
onto the pages shows the current hour and minute. The number marked on the
vertical page is a 12, or high noon.
Inside
and out, the museum documents the march of time over the course of human
history. The building is only 80 years old, but its architecture mimics the
style of a 15th century Safavid mansion. It even contains a room that
replicates the interior of Shah Abbas’s Ali Qapu Palace in Isfahan. And the
history of its former owner is irrevocably linked to the shifting of dynasties,
for the Khodadad family fled Iran in the wake of the Islamic Revolution, leaving
their property to be confiscated by the new regime. Their textile factories
ended up part of the military-industrial complex operated by the Revolutionary
Guards, and many of the clocks in the museum’s collection were confiscated from
other wealthy Tehran families with ties to the former shah.
If
you can’t make it to Tehran to visit the museum in person, you can still take a
virtual tour with this video clip from Iran’s English-language network, Press
TV:
What a beautiful, though quirky, museum. I am especially enthralled by the book sundial.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Patricia, it's beautiful. I'd go just for the architecture.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like a beautiful museum! I wonder though, how much trouble must it be to keep all of the clocks in sync? :)
ReplyDeleteSo cool. Just curious, how long did it take you to get through the museum? All those clocks must make it tough to lose track of time, huh? ;)
ReplyDeletePatricia, I think any writer or book lover should have one of those sun dials in their back yard. I learned how it worked, but not who invented it, unfortunately.
ReplyDeleteEdith, the building is stunning, inside and out.
As for synching the clocks, Beth, I don't even know if they were wound or in working order. I was usually more interested in the artwork around the clock than the timepiece itself :)
Supriya, the museum isn't very big. Only about 4 or 5 rooms, upstairs and down. We spent a couple of hours there, but a bug chunk of it was eating ice cream in the cafe.
very sad to experience unjust confiscation of all the properties of a man and his family members
ReplyDelete