Hamsa Hand Ward.

The hand is open, fingers together, thumb curved back toward the wrist, palm turned outward as if in greeting or in refusal, depending on who you ask. By old custom that open palm turns back an envious or ill-wishing look before it lands.

Hand-shaped amulets like this one reach across a great stretch of geography and belief: the Hand of Miriam in Jewish tradition, the Hand of Fatima in Islamic practice, and, older still, Phoenician and Carthaginian charms recovered around the Mediterranean and the Middle East. This one is cast in brass and finished with antique silver plating, genuine silver thick enough to wear for years before any brass shows at the high points. Its engraving follows a North African pattern, dense with small circles and radiating lines, a style more common in Moroccan and Tunisian silverwork than in the plainer Levantine versions.

Details

• Cast brass with antique silver plating
• Broad oval, about two inches tall
• Border of tooled lines in the manner of henna work
• Fine curb chain, long enough to sit at the sternum

How to use

Wear it as a pendant or clip it to a bag strap; it asks only to face outward. It makes a fitting gift for a friend beginning a hard year, a small, deliberate thing that says someone was thinking of them.

An old gesture cast in metal, ready to go out into the world with you.