Jive Door Handles

Here in the West, the handshake performs a powerful (if slightly repressed) symbolic role. At once a formal greeting, a deep sign of respect, a token of a fond farewell and (all too often) just a simple test of strength, the humble handshake performs a multitude of functions, and “pressing the flesh” is often a vital part of any social interaction.

Now, I’m not a great believer in Feng Shui, but I do believe that the way we treat our homes says a lot about us. For better or worse. Maybe it’s because I live alone, but I do tend to find that that, even after an uncharacteristically thorough tidy-up, it’s not long before my tiny flat reflects again the cluttered chaos of my disordered head.

As ever, my solution to this previously imperceptible problem is needlessly convoluted, extravagant and almost guaranteed to be ineffective.

But what the hell – I recently bought a wooden articulated hand model, such as the type that artists use: truth be told, it was pretty poor quality, but – in the same way that a human face can be represented by a circle with a couple of dots for eyes – it was kind of spooky how “human” it felt. Everyone who’s seen it so far just has to pick it up and play with it – seems like just the fact it’s shaped like a hand makes it immediately tactile.

My first idea was to buy a job lot of them, remove all the doorhandles from my flat and replace them with articulated but lifeless hands. So you’d almost have to shake hands with a room before you could enter it. Then I started thinking bigger…

Keys are easily lost. And there’s nothing more frustrating than being locked out of your own home. With nothing but an unforgivingly solid door between you and the comfort that is rightfully yours. But if your front door had a Jive Handle, you’d never be locked out.

Taking the above ramblings to their ultimate conclusion, the Jive Handle is a prosthetic hand jutting out of your front door, replete with all the necessary technology to make it respond actively to a pre-determined secret handshake that you set up before hand (no pun intended). With pressure-sensitive pads strategically placed at the palm and fingers that are robotically articulated to switch from a clasp to a slap in a microsecond, you too can feel like a Freemason as your own personalised secret handshake gains you access to your private inner sanctum.

High fives might require extra hydraulics.