eight-coat lacquer · ink on rag · narrow corridor, west
eight coats of black lacquer over linden, finished with a thin red line that you only see when the light is low. made in a workshop that closed in 1959. it holds a small ink drawing of a hand — the artist's own, drawn left-handed because the right was the one being drawn.
the hand is open, palm to the viewer. it could be asking; it could be stopping you. you may want to look at the hand in clay from the same year, and the last day's handwriting that hangs at the other end of the corridor. they are not the same hand, but they read as one if you walk past all three.
hung at chest height in a corridor where the light comes only from one end. the lacquer takes the light and gives almost none back.
field-note walk past it twice. the second time, the hand is in a slightly different place. you will not be able to say which.
fr · homemade fr · round a hand, in clay last handwriting silence