Operation Etsy: valuing craftwork over time

Large rectangular laundry basket with hinged lid and rope handles with ‘School for the Blind’ stencilled on the front. In the collection of the Museum of Liverpool MMM.1994.108.1, image taken by Anna Fairley Nielsson.

Basket-weaving: the beautiful product of skilled labour valued by the well off, or low status work for disabled people, replacing an education? Esther Fox discusses how, at different times, it has been both.

Liverpool School for the Indigent Blind

text reads Christ heals the blind for who denies that in the mind dwell truer sight and clearer light than in the eyes?

The Liverpool School for the Indigent Blind was founded in 1791 by Edward Rushton and continues to run today as the Royal School for the Blind. It was the first such school in Britian and the second to be founded in the world. Rushton was a remarkable rights campaigner: apprenticed to a slave ship aged… Read more »