Tate London - John Constable 2015

Tate London – Constable Tactile booklets

Tate London in association with the Aspire Partnership Programme commissioned two tactile booklets to interpret and accompany the painting ‘Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows’ by John Constable for a touring exhibition that opened at the Wolsey Art Gallery in Ipswich in June 2015.

The tactile booklets are bound in red leather with gold embossed text and contain tactile diagrams with descriptions and navigation text in large print and Braille. The tactile booklets and partner audio description provide the widest possible audience access to the exhibition as it tours the UK for several years.

A commission in 2025 to produce tactile books for the Field of Cloth of Gold and Game of Thrones exhibitions at Hampton Court Palace.

The tactile books are bound in Buckram with black embossed text and contain tactile diagrams with descriptions and navigation text in large print and Braille.

Images by kind permission of Historic Royal Palaces

Tate London - Le Passeur

Tate London commissioned a tactile booklet to interpret and accompany the painting Le Passeur by William Stott of Oldham for a touring exhibition opening at Tate London in 2017 and travelling in 2018/19 to UK-partner galleries: Oriel y Parc, Southampton Art Gallery, Gallery Oldham and Aberdeen Art Gallery.

The tactile booklet is bound in blue Buckram with black embossed text and contains tactile diagrams with descriptions and navigation text in large print and Braille.

Laing Art Gallery - Tactile Book

The Barbour Watercolour Gallery shows works from the Laing’s extensive collection of Watercolour paintings. 

This installation is designed to contain a tactile book of some of these paintings made by Sue King and her team at the RNIB. 

A rigid, leather outer binder is imprinted with Braille and large print text, which describes the contents. There is a laminated inner binder which holds the pages in place.

The inner binder can be easily removed from the outer binder to enable the Laing watercolour team to add a new tactile book with each new exhibition, with the object of building a tactile archive.

Tate London - John Constable 2019

In 2019 Tate London, in association with Colchester and Ipswich Museums, commissioned two tactile books to interpret the paintings A Group Portrait and The Millstream by John Constable to accompany the paintings in the Constable Collection.

The booklets are bound in green Buckram with white embossed text.

Tate 2021 - Tactile Books

In 2020, Tate in partnership with Southampton, Oldham, Aberdeen and Museum Wales commissioned a set of tactile books. Each of the four galleries chose paintings from their collections.

Southampton City Art Gallery:

Afterglow in Egypt – William Holman Hunt

Summer – Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Gallery Oldham:

Circe offering the cup to Ulysses – John William Waterhouse

The White Mountain – William Stott of Oldham

National Museum Cardiff:

Lady Charlotte Williams-Wynn and her Children – Joshua Reynolds

Storr Rock, Lady’s Cove, Evening – Alfred Sisley

Aberdeen Art Gallery:

Flood in the Highlands – Sir Edward landseer

The books were completed in 2021.

Each tactile booklet is bound in Buckram with embossed text and contains tactile diagrams with descriptions and navigation text in large print and braille.

Hampton Court Palace - Gold and Glory tactile book

Historic Royal Palaces commissioned a set of tactile interpretations as part of the Gold and Glory exhibition at Hampton Court Palace in 2019. The exhibition celebrated the 500th anniversary of the meeting of Kings at the Field of Cloth of Gold in northern France and opened to visitors in the Summer of 2021.

The interpretations comprised three tactile object replicas and a tactile book: a tactile interpretation of the Field of Cloth of Gold painting with large print text and braille

Game of Thrones at Hampton Court

A commission in 2025 to produce tactile books for the Field of Cloth of Gold and Game of Thrones exhibitions at Hampton Court Palace.

The tactile booklets are bound in Buckram with black embossed text and contain tactile diagrams with descriptions and navigation text in large print and Braille.

Images by kind permission of Historic Royal Palaces