John Bulwer‘s alphabetic chirogram from Chirologia found via Victor Stoichita.

I’m fascinated by sign languages. I guess that’s because it’s one of those border states, a grey area of something neither fish nor fowl, something unclassifiable.

Sign languages are languages that do not make sound, they can be read but also felt. They involve lots of symbolism.

Oliver Sacks in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1985) mentions fascinating cases of deafblindness where tactile sign language is used.

This particular ‘chirogram’ was designed as a rhetorical aid.