Introduction

What happens to a story when visuality is impossible—when the creator or reader is blind?

This exhibition centers around this question by examining the 1916 edition of Frances Browne’s Granny’s Wonderful Chair, illustrated by Katharine Pyle. A collection of original fairy tales, the book is about a girl named Snowflower whose magical chair whisks her away to regale a king with stories. Granny's Wonderful Chair highlights the fairy tale genre during the Golden Age of Illustration and poses questions about visual storytelling when the author herself, known as “The Blind Poetess of Ulster,” could not see. Other illustrated works for and about the blind frame and contextualize this object as an artifact of its time.

Introduction