A signature is a strange thing: a few strokes of a pen that we treat as proof of identity, agreement and sometimes fame. Here is how it came to carry so much weight.
For most of history, most people could not write. Documents were authenticated in other ways: a seal pressed into wax, a witness, or a simple mark such as a cross made in the presence of others. Seals in particular were used for centuries by rulers, officials and merchants, and the seal rather than the handwriting was what made a document official.
As literacy spread, the handwritten name gradually took over from the seal as the everyday way to show that a person had agreed to something. Law followed practice. In England, the Statute of Frauds of 1677 required certain kinds of contract to be in writing and signed, an idea that still shapes contract law in many countries that inherited English legal traditions.
Some signatures matter because of the document they sit on. The engrossed copy of the U.S. Declaration of Independence bears 56 signatures. John Hancock, as President of the Continental Congress, signed it prominently, and in American English "your John Hancock" became slang for a signature. The collection includes all 56 signers, so you can compare how differently people of the same time and place wrote their names.
A signature is not fixed. People simplify it as they sign more often, change it after a change of name or status, and their handwriting can shift with age or illness. Where we hold several authentic signatures for one person, the gallery can show them over time, which is often more revealing than a single example.
Collecting autographs of famous people is a long-standing hobby. It is also a field where forgeries are common, and where a signature's value depends heavily on provenance, the documented history of where an item came from. Serious collectors and auction houses rely on comparison with known authentic examples and on that documentary trail.
Forensic document examiners compare handwriting and signatures to assess whether a disputed signature is genuine, looking at features such as letter formation, proportions, pen pressure and fluency. That is different from graphology, the claim that handwriting reveals personality, which is not supported by scientific evidence. Enjoy the variety of hands in the collection, but be wary of anyone who claims to read character from a signature.
Today many signatures are not written with a pen at all. In the United States, the ESIGN Act of 2000 gave electronic signatures the same legal effect as handwritten ones for most transactions, and many other countries have similar laws. A typed name, a click or a drawn line on a screen can all count, which makes the handwritten signatures of the past even more distinctive.
Browse the full gallery, test yourself in The Signature Games, or read how every file is sourced and licensed.