Oval Handschmeichler

Every single Handschmeichler is a unique piece. They are handmade in our atelier with different shapes, never the same, starting with blocks of natural talc extracted from the open sky quarry located in Trimouns (France).

At the end of the sculpting process, a natural old-cut diamond is set on white gold which is then set onto a small cavity of the piece like a navel, holding within its very opposite: the hardest mineral on the Mohs scale, only scratchable by another diamond.

Each piece comes in a tailor-made box that protects and holds it on a wool felt bed, for its transportation and exhibition.

• National shipping: 8 € (24 h) + production time*
• Balearics: 15 € (24 h) + production time*
• European Union: 25 € (3-4 days) + production time*
• Other countries: Consult price and deadline at info@teresaestape.com
  
  * Production time: Our pieces, handmade in Barcelona, require a production time of approximately 2 weeks.

Handschmeichler is a serialised work with unique exemplars that pertain to my individual exhibit Children & Fools in Barcelona's Chiquita Room gallery from September 2023. The main piece of the exhibit is Ser Nadie, an artistic installation that conforms to a jewelry set made exclusively of talc. It is a dense but delicate work since talc is a very fragile mineral.

When I finished sculpting every piece for the exhibit, I realised how pleasant it had been to have worked with talc, the softest mineral in the Mohs scale: malleable but dense, soft, and buttery. But those pieces could only be touched by those who worked them, the public was not able to. This object was then born, a handpiece, made to be touched, like a rounded-out pebble you pick up at the beach and keep in your coat pocket, like a worn-out soap bar.

Handschmeichler is a sort of hand caresser, its translation from German deems it a "hand flatterer" (indeed it is a thing of existence in Germany, made of wood or stone), a piece that fits comfortably in one's hand thanks to its size, thus generating a pleasant sensation to the touch, produced also by the softness of its surface and its rounded edges.