The Staffordshire Hoard

You might be familiar with the Staffordshire Hoard, the biggest find of Anglo-Saxon gold ever found.  As part of the outreach project for the new Staffordshire Hoard Gallery at Birmingham Museum I worked with fellow artist Zoe Partington and Cerebral Palsy West Midlands.  Zoe also worked with a number of visually impaired residents from Focus Housing to make audio descriptions  The aim of the sessions I worked on was to produce tactile responses to the collection; quite a challenge when the pieces are so small and the detail so tricky to see……but then that was the whole point in the outreach sessions….to make the collection accessible to more people.

We worked on acetate film to draw or trace our versions based on photographs of the pieces underneath.  We also coloured and collaged them.  The sessions were light hearted with people dropping in and out, finishing off each other’s work or concentrating on a single piece over several weeks.  The drawings were all scanned and then I tried to combine work into a series of 11 images that were printed onto cotton velvet or drill.  I then machine embroidered or free motion quilted them to give tactile detail and these pieces of fabric were made into pages for a tactile book incorporating a press button that would allow an audio description to play.  You can see the pages under construction with the electronics in the photo.

Zoe also added tactile stencils so you can ‘feel’ the pieces.  You’ll find the book on the Mead Table in the new Staffordshire Hoard Gallery in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery