The Reading Hand
The Chiromantic Hand
A careful anatomy of a belief, drawn like a botanist’s leaf.
- Work
- from an English chiromancy manual
- Maker
- Manuscript hand, unknown
- Date
- 1648
- Source
- Wellcome Collection, London (MS 8727)
Wellcome Collection. Public Domain / CC BY 4.0
Format
The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source plate — yours to print, study, and explore.
Size
$29.00
The story
An open palm, its surface covered in symbols — the planets and the signs of the zodiac distributed across the mounts, the lines named, the whole hand oriented to the four quarters like a small map: Oriens, Occidens, Septentrio, Meridies. The drawing comes from an English practical manual of chiromancy dated 1648, written and illustrated by hand rather than printed. Chiromancy read the palm as a text the body had written; whether it read anything real is not the point here. We hang the plate as history: a careful, confident anatomy of a belief, drawn with the same seriousness a botanist would give a leaf.
See it on your wall
The plate, in your home
The Chiromantic Hand 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 an English chiromancy manual (1648), held by Wellcome Collection, London (MS 8727). 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.
Attribution: Wellcome Collection. Public Domain / CC BY 4.0
