The Reading Hand
The Symbolical Head
A science that persuaded a century, and then fell.
- Work
- from the Fowlers' phrenological charts
- Maker
- O. S. & L. N. Fowler
- Date
- c. 1859
- Source
- Fowler & Wells · scan: Wikimedia Commons
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
A head in profile, the scalp partitioned into small numbered fields each labelled with a faculty — Benevolence, Combativeness, Veneration, Mirth — the famous 'Symbolical Head' of the Fowler brothers, the great popularisers of phrenology. Their charts, sold by the thousand through the nineteenth century, taught that character sat in discrete organs of the brain, readable as bumps on the skull. Phrenology was wrong — the mind is not parcelled out this way, and the skull does not report it — and it did real harm in its day. We hang the plate for exactly that reason: as a vivid specimen in the history of ideas, a science that persuaded a century and then fell.
See it on your wall
The plate, in your home
The Symbolical Head 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 the Fowlers' phrenological charts (1859), held by Fowler & Wells · 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.
Attribution: Wellcome Collection. Public Domain / CC BY 4.0
