A century ago, a British museum curator named John Alfred
Carlton Deas organized sessions where blind children could
handle objects in the Sunderland museum collection. The event
was so successful that he expanded the program to include blind
adults. The idea makes sense not just for blind people, but also
for visual artists. If you know how a form feels, you can
definitely draw it better. An interesting drawing exercise is to
confront a novel object blindfolded and then, without looking at
it, figure out how to draw it. The experience gives you a whole
new understanding of shading and contours. These photographs
come from the Public Domain Review.