Description

This rectangular book or magazine, seemingly titled 'Nuggets', is printed and embossed almost entirely in Braille, having been produced specifically for the Blind. This object was displayed in the co-curated gallery trail "Nothing Without Us: Experiences of Disability" at the Pitt Rivers Museum, curated by Kyle Lewis Jordan, running from 16th November 2023 - 6th October 2024.

A handwritten inscription on the front cover says that it is 'Braille reading book used by an old boy from this school who lost his sight in the war'. The cover was probably originally blue but has now faded to fawn.

Community curation: Developed in the early 19th century by the partially-blind French educator Louis Braille, braille-writing – six dots formed in a 3 x 2 matrix with sixty-four different combinations – spread worldwide as a means of educating blind and visually impaired children. By the next century, with many people made blind through the hazardous effects of industrialisation and the First World War, multiple grass-roots movements formed by and for the partially sighted and the blind utilised braille in their outreach material. The UK’s National Institute for the Blind (modern-day RNIB) published at least fourteen magazines and many more periodicals in the 1920s, many of which featured calls for social and economic reform. - Kyle J, a Believer in Change, Curating for Change Fellow (Ashmolean Museum and Pitt Rivers Museum)