'most touched' photo book gathers more than 1,000 door handles from around the world

Barbara Glasner reveals ‘most touched’ door handles 

Although we may not think about it, one of the most touched objects in our daily life is the door handles, and they are found in our houses, work, and public spaces. Design and architecture expert Barbara Glasner embarked on a doorknob-hunting journey, capturing these underestimated but essential daily items from different places all around the world.

Over several years of work, Barbara collected more than a thousand door knobs, from intricate handle sculptures to millionfold industrialized ones, gathering them in a photo book. ‘Most Touched’ is the largest photo collection to date showcasing these much-used items that accompany our routines.

During the pandemic, handles became the most unattractive object to hold. People avoid instinctively touching them with bare hands, often using their elbows or foot to open a door. Even though they might sometimes look unappealing, handles are the objects we touch the most in our everyday life — of course, after our cell phones, and they are extremely useful and important.

all images by form

one door handle, many stories

‘Most Touched’ is a photo collection of handle doors, some taken by Barbara Glasner (see more here), levering the attention on these mass-produced products.‘From the iconic handmade handle sculpture to the millionfold industrially manufactured product, universal themes such as aesthetic effect, materiality, function and ergonomics, ornamentation and patina, status and style can be read across epochs.’

Leafing through the book, a series of handles, different in color, shape, and materiality, are showcased next to each other on ‘an equal footing’. ‘Following a strict graphic concept, this archival publication itself becomes a contemporary art object.’  The visual layer is accompanied by four texts written by renowned authors, commenting on the diverse cultural facets revealed on the door handles.  

project info:

name of the book: Most Touched

editor: Barbara Glasner
texts: Jasmin Jouhar, Markus Frenzl, Wolfgang Reul, Frank Hatami-Fardi
graphic designer: Autostrada Studios, Berlin

publishing form: 1104 pages, 14.8 x 21 x 6.7 cm, 1.3 kg, open thread binding, coverless, bilingual German and  English