Signature (Object Classes)

Object Classes is a sequence of brief, fantastically designed books concerning the hidden lives of atypical issues.

Why will we signal our names? How can a squiggle each enslave and liberate? Signatures usually require a witness-as if the scrawl itself will not be sufficient. What other forms of beliefs and longings justify our signing practices?

Signature addresses these questions because it roams from a roundtable on the Greek island of Syros, to a scene of handwriting evaluation carried out in an English pub, from a marriage in Moscow, the place friends signal the bride’s physique, to a San Franciscan tattoo parlor eager about arcane varieties.

The signature’s historical past encompasses historic handprints on cave partitions, autograph hunters, the branding of slaves, metaphysical poetry, medical malpractice, hip-hop lyrics, authorized challenges to digital signatures, ice cores harvested from Greenland, and tales of forgery and autopens.

Half cultural chronicle, half travelogue, Signature pursues the figuring out marks made by folks, animals, and planetary forces, revealing the tales and fantasies hidden of their signatures.

Object Classes is revealed in partnership with an essay sequence in The Atlantic.