The Phrenological Chart

Spurzheim’s faculties, mapped on a head.

Work: etching
Maker: after Orson Squire Fowler
Date: 19th century
Held by: Wellcome Collection

Format

The full-resolution scan, colour-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore.

Size

$29.00

The story

A phrenological chart attributed to Orson Squire Fowler, the American phrenologist who made the subject a household business in the nineteenth century. A head in profile carries the symbols of the faculties, and columns of lettering give an account and justification of the whole system. The Wellcome Collection notes that its list reproduces Spurzheim's arrangement of 1825, with two unnumbered feelings added, personal identity and love of life, and that the design at the foot copies the frontispiece of Combe's System of Phrenology.

See it on your wall

The plate, in the room it was made for

The Phrenological Chart, printed large and framed — in the consulting room, the study, the library. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.

The Phrenological Chart framed on the wall

About this reproduction

A reproduction of etching — after Orson Squire Fowler, 19th century — from the copy held by Wellcome Collection. The source. The work is centuries out of copyright and in the public domain.
Printed faithful to that source scan. We do not re-colour it, complete it, or interpret it; the plate you receive is the plate as it survives.
Printed to order on EMA matte art paper, 200gsm. Framed editions sit in a box frame under acrylic, with no mount.
Colour-managed to the source; the tone of the paper and the ink is the engraver’s, not ours.
Ships in 5–10 business days.
If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.

Why our plates cost more than a poster: a poster is a mass run on wood-pulp stock, colour-corrected to whatever flattered the press that day. This is one sheet, pulled for you, at a size where the engraver’s hand is visible — the linework, the tonal work, the lettering — on a matte sheet that shows every line without glare.

From the same collection