Looking good for Friday night...

Why do some faces set my pulse racing and not others? If this has ever crossed your mind, you are not alone. In the past, many have tried to use science to decode the elusive quality of beauty and many are still trying; see David Perrett's latest book In your Face: the new science of human attraction as an example. This relatively small but important part of our bodies certainly holds a deep fascination whether you are a scientist or simply looking for love. But is beauty just in the eye of the beholder?

This Friday evening 6-10pm 7th October a free event at the National Portrait Gallery, London, (see 'Glamour Factory' for full details) will feature images and curios from the Library. It will take place in Room 16 and is called 'What is Beauty?' as part of the Image is Everthing section. Here the concepts of beauty and physiognomy will be related to film stars of today, will your favourite be there? The night is inspired by classic Hollywood portait photography and features talks, music and activities.

Aided by the judicious use of a kohl pencil I will also be road-testing an eighteenth-century forehead reader to discover if it holds any surprises for a modern-day audience. It will be an informal session ending around 20.45hrs

Are there really rules of beauty all good-looking people conform to? Join the debate and take advantage of other talks by experts such as Semir Zeki (Professor of Neuroaesthetics, UCL) and Dr David Gems (Institute of Healthy Aging, UCL). You can even be photographed like a celebrity too. If you feel like putting on the style, black and white is the theme of this glamourous evening.

Images:
Plate engraving illustrating a personification of 'Beauty' by Isaac Fuller and Pierce Tempest, 1709 from Wellcome Images (image number L0035394)

Natural beauty, digital illustration by Marina Caruso from Wellcome Images (image number B0007013)

Wellcome Library Insight - Fascinating Faces

This Thursday afternoon (16th June) offers another chance to explore the provocative idea that faces can be 'read', through our free Fascinating Faces 'Insight' session.

This session will explore face reading, from its origins in Ancient Greece and China up to present day security debates on facial recognition.

Our Insight sessions give visitors to the Wellcome Library an opportunity to explore the variety of our holdings. Sessions are thematic in style, last around an hour and offer a chance to learn about our collections from a member of Library staff.

This Thursday's session starts at 3pm, and tickets are available from the Wellcome Collection Information Desk from 1.30pm onwards. For more details, see the Wellcome Collection website.

Image: J.C. Lavater, Essays on physiognomy, translated by Henry Hunter, D.D. London: John Murray, 1789-1798. Volume I, page 96, group of faces set in a circle.

Wellcome Library Insights: June - July

Our popular Insight sessions offer visitors to the Wellcome Library an opportunity to explore the variety of our holdings. These free sessions are thematic in style, last around an hour and offer a chance to learn about our collections.

Details of June and July's Insights have just been released. They are:

Fascinating Faces - 16th June, 3pm-4pm
(Learn about the provocative idea that our faces can be 'read' - is it an art or a science?)

Women, Health and Healing - 23rd June, 3pm-4pm
(Explore the changing attitudes of women in medicine and attitudes to female healers through the centuries)

Henry Wellcome: His Life and Work - 28th July, 6pm-7pm
(Find out more about our founder as an individual, a businessman and as a collector).

For more details on how to attend the sessions, please follow the links above to the appropriate pages on the Wellcome Collection website.

Image: Seven portraits of women, compared for their beauty and prudence. Drawing, c. 1789 (Wellcome Library no. 28698i)

May item of the month: English manual of practical chiromancy or palmistry, 1648

Ever wished you had the ability to accurately judge a person’s character from their appearance? Perhaps you want to know when your baby will be born? Or what message your new beard is giving to strangers? Well, you’re in luck. The Wellcome Library Archives and Manuscripts department have just the thing for you!

MS.8727 is a newly catalogued manual of practical chiromancy or palmistry, dating from 1648. The manuscript also includes sections on physiognomy and metoscopy, or the reading of lines on the forehead.

Using this manual, we learn that long, white fingernails are found on sickly, feverish people, whilst those with short, crooked nails are proud people who “delight in superfluity.” People with white or grey hair are slippery with “evill manners.” Narrow eyebrows of pale gold which consist only of short hairs demonstrate that a person is “one of good nature, apt to everything, fearful, but given to revenge.”

Even a person’s facial hair can be used to judge their personality. The man in the picture above, with his handsome beard, is apparently “melancholique. Also ingenious, sincere, cordiall, constant, resolute and valiant.” The manual suggests he would make a good soldier. However, if you are unable to grow such an impressive beard, remember that a lack of facial hair will lead people to believe you have “an evill nature."



Expectant parents are given very specific advice on how to calculate exactly when a baby will be born by reading their own palms. For example: “if that line ends in the plaine of Mars it is borne in March or October upon a Tuesday; if the crosses or lines go towards Mercury and end there, they are borne in May or August Wednesday.”

Palmistry can also be used to amaze your friends by correctly guessing a stranger’s birth date: “if that line end toward the hill of Luna and it have a crosse, sure he or she was borne on 10th June on Monday.”

If you are interested in finding out more about the subject of face reading, the Wellcome Library Insights session on Fascinating Faces is next being held on Thursday 16 June at 3 O'Clock. More information about this and other events can be found on the Wellcome Collection website.

London Faces: new 'Insight'

This Saturday, 2nd October, the library will feature a new Insight talk - London Faces - to coincide with Story of London events. Learn how Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens and James Gillray made their own contributions to the fascinating history of physiognomy (the 'science' of face reading). See bitingly satirical pictures, original nineteenth century material and even tea towels as we revisit three key inhabitants of England's capital from a very different perspective.

Held in the Wellcome Library at 2.30pm-3.30pm. Please see details as number are limited: Wellcome Collection

Wellcome Library Insights - September and October

Our popular Insight sessions offer visitors to the Wellcome Library an opportunity to explore the variety of our holdings. These free sessions are thematic in style, last around an hour and offer a chance to learn about our collections.

The next series of Insights begins this Thursday afternoon (2nd September) at 3pm, with a session exploring the manuscripts and early printed books once owned by William Morris that are now part of the Wellcome Library's collections.

You can pick up your free ticket for this event from the Wellcome Collection Information Desk from 13.30 on the day. Tickets are issued on a first-come, first-served basis: for more details, see the Wellcome Collection website.

Our other Insights sessions for September and October are:

The Quest for Perfect Skin - Thursday 9th September, 3-4pm

Mind and Body, Heart and Soul – Thursday 23rd September, 6-7pm

London Faces - Saturday 2nd October, 2.30-3.30pm

Anatomies of London - Thursday 7th October, 6-7pm and Saturday 9th October, 2.30-3.30pm

Henry Wellcome: His Life and Work - 21st October, 3-4pm

For more details on attending the sessions, please follow the links above to the appropriate pages on the Wellcome Collection website.

For a preview of other Wellcome Collection events over the next few months, have a look at this post on the Wellcome Collection Blog.

Image: Liber chronicarum, previously owned by William Morris.

Wellcome Library Insight - Fascinating Faces

This Thursday afternoon (6th May) offers another chance to explore the provocative idea that faces can be 'read', through our free Fascinating Faces 'Insight' session.

This session will explore face reading, from its origins in Ancient Greece and China up to present day security debates on facial recognition.

Our Insight sessions give visitors to the Wellcome Library an opportunity to explore the variety of our holdings. Sessions are thematic in style, last around an hour and offer a chance to learn about our collections from a member of Library staff.

This Thursday's session starts at 3pm, and tickets are available from the Wellcome Collection Information Desk from 1.30pm onwards. For more details, see the Wellcome Collection website.

Wellcome Library Insights: April - May 2010

Our popular Insight sessions offer visitors to the Wellcome Library an opportunity to explore the variety of our holdings. These free sessions are thematic in style, last around an hour and offer a chance to learn about our collections from a member of Library staff.

The Spring 2010 series of Insights begins this Thursday afternoon (8th April) at 3pm, exploring how Native American cultures have been recorded, celebrated and misrepresented, using examples from the Library’s American collections. You can pick up your free ticket for this event from the Wellcome Collection Information Desk from 13.30 on the day. Tickets are issued on a first-come, first-served basis: for more details, see the Wellcome Collection website.

Our upcoming Insights sessions for April and May are:

Caricatures and Cartoons - 22nd April, 3-4pm

Anatomies of London – 29th April, 6-7pm

Fascinating Faces – 6th May, 3-4pm

The Occult - 13th May, 6-7pm

Madness - 20th May, 3-4pm

For more details on attending the sessions, please follow the links above to the appropriate pages on the Wellcome Collection website.

Wellcome Library Insight: Facing Up to the Past

This week's free Wellcome Library session - on Thursday 1st April - offers both a chance to explore face reading through the collections of the Wellcome Library and also to learn about the life and death masks collected by Sir Francis Galton, and which are now part of the Galton Collection, UCL.

Speakers:
Natasha McEnroe, Grant Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy
Danny Rees, Assistant Librarian, Wellcome Library

This Thursday's session is from 6pm-7.30pm, and tickets are available on the day from the Wellcome Collection Information Desk from 4.30pm onwards.

For more details, see the Wellcome Collection website.

(Image shown: Life mask of Sir Henry Wellcome, c.1902).

We're talking 'heads'

Last week self-styled 'Guru of the Gurners' Danny Rees treated Wellcome Trust staff to a display of rare and unusual library material on the subject of face reading. Items featured included book illustrations from Charles Darwin and phrenologist George Combe and an 18th Century Chinese medical diagnostic chart. Seen here, the mini-exhibition was held in the hallowed hall of 215 Euston Road. Colleagues could have their ears and lips 'read' in between lunchtime sandwiches. Face reading is just one of the free library Insight talks also open to the general public, current progamme:
http://www.wellcomecollection.org/press/2009/WTX054166.htm

A new programme will be announced later for the autumn/winter sessions.

On me 'ead..

The Library has recently purchased the only known copy of a German pamphlet from 1785 that still contains two original 'forehead reading' templates. Made of cardboard and hand painted, these unique plates fit over the forehead to enable the practise of metoposcopy. Metoposcopy is the study of lines on the face to tell fortunes and reveal something of the individual's character. These curious items are now available to see via the Wellcome Images catalogue and the book has been digitally photographed.