20th century gestures / Supplement to the Italian Dictionary

By chance, just after posting the 21st century gestures series, I discovered Bruno Munari’s 1963 book “Supplemento al dizionario italiano”. (This piece originally published at cityofsound.com on 18 October 2012.)

This is a delicious project, which starts with a collection of gestures collated in the 19th century, published in 1832 in Naples, collated by Canon Andrea de Jorio under the title “The Ancients’ mimic through the Neapolitan gestures”.

This beautifully and simply illustrated set features some gestures still in existence, such as rubbing thumb and forefinger to denote “money”, as well as thumbing the nose and so on. Though I’m not sure we see the gesture for “You act a sham part of the first lady!” used so much these days. Then again, I’ve never spent much time in Napoli.