Hanky Family Studio

A small studio making editioned contemporary artworks on a fifty-year-old grammar.

What we make

Each print is three things: a colour, a position and a word. The colour and its pocket are the code. The word is what it means on that side. The figure is the constant. Every colour in the collection is unique — no two read the same on a wall — and every print carries the HANKY FAMILY® mark and its reference number in the margin, with a certificate of provenance.

How this site is made

Every page is generated from one file — the HankyCode Master (v3), 311 codes with their colour, pocket meanings, era, origin and source — then edited and checked by the studio before it is published. Historical claims cite Fischer (1977), Damron (1980) and Townsend (1983), and the archives that hold them. We do not invent statistics and we do not claim a history that isn’t ours.

The Hankyfamily

The voice you meet on our social channels — the Hankyfamily — is an AI-generated art construct, and we say so wherever it appears. It has no lived experience and does not claim any. It can tell you what a colour means and where it comes from; it cannot tell you who you are, and it will never handle your money or your complaint. A person at the studio does that.

The mark

HANKY FAMILY® is a registered trade mark (UK00004351805): the figure, the loop and the wordmark together. The figure is the constant on every print; the loop above it — give and receive, joined — is the grammar of the code in one line. The registered symbol is used only beside this mark, never beside a code.

Custodianship

The historical codes belong to the communities that built them. We are custodians of a record, not owners of it: we cite, we credit, we link to the archives, and we consult where we can. If we have something wrong, tell us and we will fix it.