M.C. Escher Hand With Reflective Globe T-Shirt
A hand holds a mirrored sphere, and in the sphere is the room, the window, the furniture, and Escher himself looking back out of it.
He made it in 1935, and the geometry is exact rather than imagined: a reflective sphere gathers almost the entire room into one image, and it always puts the person holding it dead centre, unmoving, no matter how they turn it. Escher pointed that out himself — that the eye of the person holding the globe sits at the immovable middle of the world, and cannot get out of it. It is a self-portrait about the impossibility of stepping outside your own point of view.
Daddy finds it the most quietly unsettling thing in the edit, and wears it more than any of the others.
The shirt itself is the good kind of basic: combed ring-spun cotton, preshrunk, side-seamed so it hangs straight, taped shoulders so the collar doesn’t twist after the fortieth wash. It fits like the tee you’ve had for ten years, on day one.
Curator’s note
A dense, tonal graphic. Grey or black, and nothing else competing for attention.
Details
Artwork: Hand with Reflecting Sphere — M.C. Escher, lithograph, 1935
100% combed ring-spun cotton, 4.3 oz/yd² (heather colours 10% polyester)
Preshrunk 32/1 jersey knit
Crew neck, short sleeves
Side seamed, shoulder-to-shoulder tape, seamed collar
Double-needle sleeve and bottom hems
Oeko-Tex® Standard 100 certified — tested free of harmful substances
How to wear it
Charcoal or black tee, dark jeans, a plain overshirt. Save it for the rooms where somebody will notice.
Sizing
Unisex cut, true to size. Women’s sizes are fitted — check the size chart and size up for a looser fit.