#commontouch

Learn the hand signing alphabet with this graphic printed in Philadelphia (ca. 1850). 

This week we are highlighting #typetuesday and printing for the blind to celebrate the opening of our newest exhibit Common Touch: The Art of the Senses in the History of the Blind. These blocks enabled the blind to read their own writing by creating impressed letters through paper.     

Pin point blocks (ca. 1834). On loan from the New York Institute for Special Education.

Common Touch is now open through October 21, 2016. For more information please visit us HERE.

The installation of our upcoming exhibition, Common Touch, is under way!! For more information please visit http://commontouch.librarycompany.org.

Tobin Siebers, Disability Aesthetics, 2010, 5.

Common Touch exhibition opens April 4, 2016.

#CommonTouch #TBT.

Raised-print map from the "Fifth Annual Report of the Trustees of the New-England Institution for the Education of the Blind, to the Corporation" (1837).

Picture of a raised-print specimen page from the Annual Report displaying a raised map and raised text. A third of the page on the viewer’s left is filled with raised text, reading: “explanation: the rough part represents water. b boston; c charlestown; k cambridge. The r. charles. W watertown; J Jamaica lake; s south boston; c castle island &c.” On the viewer’s right is a raised map of a small portion of the east coast of Massachusetts depicted in thin, raised, meandering outline, showing Boston and surrounding areas on the left and water on the right. The word “north” is at the top of the map in raised text, and letters (b, c, k, r, w, J, s, and d) designate various landmarks and cities. Bodies of water are filled in with a raised pattern of thin horizontal lines. The paper is off-white, and the book appears to be slightly worn, especially at the edges. The center seam of the open book has a small tear.

Common Touch opening April 4, 2016.  http://commontouch.librarycompany.org/