Artist's Corner: Handle with Care by Jacqueline Nicholls

I’ve been working with the Centre for Jewish Studies at Manchester University on their 50 Jewish Objects project, focusing on items that feature the hand and handwriting. I selected the following four objects, but had the opportunity to handle and examine many others that were of interest: 1. handwritten fragment from Maimondes’ Mishah Torah 2. The Book of Wonder 3. a hamza (an amulet in the shape of a hand), and 4. Elaine Feinstein’s poem ‘Hands’ - the memory and touch of one who is not there.

These are my notes from initial handling the objects:

The Book of Wonder. Its leather binding is crumbling. Leaves of printed text pad out the binding on the handwritten manuscript. Letters of moveable type peek through the holes in the leather. The spine is cracked and disappearing, revealing the imprint of writing that was once on the paper reused for the spine. We open it. The first page is stained by time and marked by trails of ink. I can read the Hebrew title, but I can’t read Arabic, and so I cannot understand the line under the title but I know it’s calling to be read, it’s saying something. And there are random lines, where perhaps the scribe was testing how much pressure to put on the nib to the paper, how smoothly does the ink flow, how steady is his hand. It is a he who signs his name with a flourish, staking his claim on the book. There’s a doodle, a whimsical bird reminiscent of the creatures found on amulets, charming those who enter the book, protecting us from the evil eye, and protection is needed. This is a seventeenth century book about mystical secrets, handwritten, because if it was to be printed then it would be need to be approved by the Christian censor. This is the time of the Spanish Inquisition and such texts were considered blasphemous.

I then pick up a panel of perspex, in which is caught two scraps of paper. The researchers call it ‘The Butterfly Fragment’ due to its shape. It’s a whimsical name, adding a touch of lightness. But this is a fragment of the Mishna Torah, written in the handwriting of Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon. He was twelfth century rabbinic giant whose legal rulings and philosophy are still authoritative today. He is known as Maimondes or Rambam, and his names appear on hospitals and schools, honouring his legacy. The butterfly is so called because it flutters by, and as I draw the fragment and try to recreate Rambam’s handwriting, I notice the light flicks and elegant trails of the pen. This is not a heavy hand that held the nib under great pressure. The choreography of the pen is subtle and delicate, lightly crossing out and adding additional notes, flowing between Hebrew and Arabic with fluency. It is fascinating to see the thinking in action in the writing. This is not the final layout that is in the printed Mishna Torah. Rambam is noted for being structured, his Mishna Torah is his encyclopaedic reworking of Jewish Law. In it he has taken ownership of the tradition, and reordered the laws according to his logic and understanding.

Elaine Feinstein, a contemporary poet, has bequeathed her archive to the collection. In her poem ‘Hands’ she writes of holding hands with an old lover who is no longer around. In the cardboard boxes are various versions of the typesetting of this poem as she plays with different ways of highlighting the presence of the long lost lover, how to write in another’s voice as one is describing their touch. Playing with separating and merging the boundaries between the lovers, Feinstein settles for a combination of italics and shifting the lines. Her poem recalls the delight of first falling in love, holding hands on the airplane, with the pain of saying goodbye, holding the dying loved one’s hand by the hospital bed. Her writing is rooted in personal intimacies, her body’s experiences, links to her loved ones and to her Jewish heritage.

Elaine Feinstein’s poem describes the memory of holding the lovers hand. Through memory, she is carrying the presence and touch of the other. Keeping it precious. This brings me to the final object, the Hamza. An amulet made of a simple drawing of a hand, surrounded by God’s names, and the names of angels, in a rough metal casing, showing signs of rust and tarnish, with a loop at the top. This, and its diminutive size, imply that this amulet would have been worn rather than a wall-hanging, probably under clothing as it is not a decorative item of jewellery. The drawing is fairly crude and the lettering is not the type used by ritual scribes. All this suggests this to be an intimate and personal amulet, worn close to the body, connecting the wearer with a protective touch that they carry with them in their everyday life.

My art practice engages with traditional Jewish texts, my handwriting is a means of taking ownership as I transport the text from the printed page of the authoritative book to personal space of drawing. I am interested in handwriting as a form of drawing, they both dance between clarity and incoherence, abstraction and representation. Handwriting gives language a human intimate presence. In knowing that a particular person once held the pen that left that trail on the paper, the handwritten artefact has an aura reminiscent of a relic. In the presence of the handwriting, we are holding hands with the ones who are no longer there. Many hands have left their trace on these artefacts. Each add to it, sending messages out to the future, writing their own layer into its history. The artefacts carry the presence of those who have touched, written, bound, sold, studied. They also show signs of fire, water and worms. But, according to Raymond Tallis, neither worm, fire or water could be said to have touched it. “Manipulative knowledge which perceives the object, reaches for it, grasps it, lifts or holds it, shapes it or uses it to act on something else in the world, or place, replaces it - is the distance between the genius of prehension reaches (shared with other animals) and the differed mysteries of apprehension and comprehension, unique to humans.” [Raymond Tallis, The Hand, p36] Human touch blurs boundaries between toucher and what is touched. Pushing back on our body, we make conscious contact. For the worm, the book is food. To the fire, it is fuel, and for water, it absorbs. Leaving destructive trails. But for the human touch, it comes alive and softens, the book’s sharp corners are rounded by those who have stroked its pages. The hand feels the book’s weight, the pages’ delicacy, anticipating how to grip the edge and turn the page, it writes notes in the margins, conversing with the text, bringing it into a living conversation.

As a response to the archive I created a handmade book, presented within tyvek pillows reminiscent of the supports used by the library. The books covered were made from photocopied, pulped sheets of Rambam’s Mishna Torah, moulded in empty spaces of my cupped handed. The book is made from a concertina, on one side are drawings of the spaces created by the fingers as they hold and touch. The other side are some of my notes and reflections from being in the archive. I made cut-outs of the negative spaces of the hands, so when the concertina was bound at one edge, only glimpses of the writing can be seen. An echo of the some of the holes and spaces of the items in the books in the archive. On the pillows are printed the phrases “handle with care” and “the traces and the spaces that our bodies leave behind”.

In addition to making this art object, I ran workshops on handmade books in Manchester and Krakow, and an Art Salon in London exploring how artists use their heritage in their work. The Manchester workshop was on 29 May 2019, held at the Friends Meeting House, with 15 participants. Participants learnt traditional bookmaking techniques, from folding paper, to hand-stitching, glueing and creating a hard cover. Throughout the workshops I made reference to the #50JewishObject project and the particular artefacts. The Krakow workshop was part of the Krakow Jewish Festival, hosted at the JCC Krakow on 27 June 2019, and was attended by 20 participants. The Art Salon was at JW3 London, on the 23 July 2019, and looked at different ways to artistically respond to heritage and the concept of inheritance. I hosted the salon, opening it with a general introduction to the concept of inheritance in Jewish tradition. That main speaker was the poet/artist Sophie Herxheimer who presented her latest book ‘Velcome to Inklandt', poems written in her grandmother’s heavily accentuated English, and also spoke about her conversations with ghosts that guide her art. The salon was attended by 30 artists, of different disciplines and the conversation following the presentations explored how we each are inspired by, constrained, sometimes in conversation, sometimes in argument, but always engaging with those who came before.

Follow this link to see more images of Handle with Care (and other artwork related to the 50 Jewish Objects project).