Finding collections relating to d/Deaf, disabled and neurodiverse people

One of the aims of our project is to make collections relating to d/Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people more visible – and to share some of the objects our Fellows and Trainees are discovering.

Some will have quite obvious connections to disabled people’s lives – a walking stick, some braille or images of disabled people. But we will also be exploring less obvious connections too. Sometimes the significance of an object is its owner; its part in a bigger story, or the way someone with lived experience of disability has responded to it. In this way we hope to broaden the ways that d/Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent stories are told.

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AMPLIFON ACOUSTIC CHAIR (Furniture)

MOL.2017.50

ID: A large golden armchair with two decorative lions' heads with open mouths at the end of each armrest.“When I first saw this chair I felt glad that I had my hearing aids and thought it was so ugly. It would be most restrictive if that chair was my hearing equipment!”Kathie Hare-Cockburn, Liverpool Deaf Community...

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Rights information: Courtesy of Museum of Liverpool

Description

ID: A large golden armchair with two decorative lions' heads with open mouths at the end of each armrest.

“When I first saw this chair I felt glad that I had my hearing aids and thought it was so ugly. It would be most restrictive if that chair was my hearing equipment!”
Kathie Hare-Cockburn, Liverpool Deaf Community group

This special armchair is a recreation of an acoustic chair made in 1819 for King John VI of Portugal and Brazil, who was hard of hearing.

Visitors who wanted to speak to the King knelt down and talked into the lions’ mouths. The amplified sound was then directed to the King’s ear piece which was fixed to the end of a tube similar to the one you can see on the back of this chair.

This chair sat proudly in the window of the Liverpool Hearing Centre, Bold Street for many years until it was kindly donated to the Museum of Liverpool in 2017.

Do you remember it?

Meet our Fellows and Trainees

The Curating for Change project is running eight Fellowships over 18 months and eight Traineeships over 40 days based across 20 partner museums. Learn more about our Fellows and Trainees here.

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