White book cover on light grey background with image of two hands
White book cover on light grey background with image of two hands
Sam Dolbear

Hand that touch this fortune will

£15.00

Take my hand. Trace the lines on my palm with your fingers. What size and shape are they? Take note of their form: are they forked, tasselled, wavy, chained, broken? Now examine my fingers. Tell me my disposition; tell me what beholds me.

Mapping the hand as cosmos as clinic as history as biography, hand reading is a technique suspended between medical and mystical judgement, empirical diagnosis and speculative divination. This book weaves the lives and work of the ‘reader’ and the ‘read’ together in an intricate fabric. The central ‘reader’ is Charlotte Wolff (1897–1986), a friend of Walter Benjamin, Helen Grund, and Ernst Schoen, who after fleeing from Germany’s new regime in 1933, took up hand reading in Paris to make ends meet. The ‘read’ are anonymous acrobats, dancers, and department-store managers, and members of the avant-gardes of Paris and London, from Antonin Artaud to Romola Nijinsky, Marcel Duchamp to Virginia Woolf.

Arranged as an index, this book is both a guide to the techniques of hand reading and a critical theory of its history and practice, mixed with Wolff’s later work as a theorist of gender and sexuality.

Each book holds a very lovely insert of a hand reading chart, designed by Ana Cecilia Breña and Sam Dolbear. Printed on tracing paper, it allows the reader to read their hand as they read the book.

Ma Bibliotheque, 2024
Paperback, 224 pages
120 x 190mm
ISBN: 9781910055991

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The South London Gallery Shop sells books & magazines, gifts, cards, stationery and artist limited editions. The Shop opening hours are:

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As with all purchases, liability of the item is the responsibility of the customer after the point of purchase. If you would like us to send you your order in the post, please read the below conditions carefully.

If you are purchasing books, stationery or gifts from us (excluding ceramics, glassware, limited editions and artworks) we will send your order with the basic coverage offered by the shipping services we work with. If you would like a specific level of insurance or delivery service used, please contact us at the time of purchase, so we can do our best to accomodate your requests.

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More information on our Returns Policy and general Terms & Conditions can be found here.

Please note our final order date for Christmas delivery will be Thursday the 12th of December 2024. Any order received after the 12th of December cannot be guaranteed to arrive before 24th December. Purchases made during the Christmas holidays will be shipped at the beginning of January.

If your order arrives damaged, we kindly ask that you document any damage to the parcel and its contents and send it to us at shop@southlondongallery.org. After this is received and confirmed with us, you will be able opt for a refund, or to have a new order sent to you. Find more information on our returns policy and our terms & conditions here.

If for any reason you are not completely satisfied with your purchase, we will happily exchange or refund your items within 14 days of receipt, as long as it is sent back to us in its original condition, this includes original packaging. If you have purchased your items in-store, you can request an exchange or refund within 30 days.

 

We will inspect all orders returned to us and proceed accordingly. If the items returned fail to meet the criteria outlined above, we will be unable to exchange or refund your items.

 

If you have purchased online, you will be able to exchange or return your purchased items by following our returns procedure. Find our returns policy here.

As with all purchases, liability of the item is the responsibility of the customer after the point of purchase. If you would like us to send you your order in the post, please read the below conditions carefully.

If you are purchasing books, stationery or gifts from us (excluding ceramics, glassware, limited editions and artworks) we will send your order with the basic coverage offered by the shipping services we work with. If you would like a specific level of insurance or delivery service used, please contact us at the time of purchase, so we can do our best to accomodate your requests.

If you would like us to use our regular service to send an order containing fragile items, including ceramics, glassware, limited editions and artworks, we will do our best to ensure they are safely packed. Please note, we cannot guarantee these will be safe from any damage that may occur on their journey to you. If you wish to discuss alternative shipping arrangements, please email us at shop@southlondongallery.org.