Unfolding Metamorphosis, or the Early American Tactile Image

Abstract

This article uncovers the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century media genre of the “tactile image,” pictures designed to engage hand and eye in tandem. In 1787, a lift-the-flap engraving known as the Metamorphosis was published in Philadelphia, and it quickly multiplied in print and manuscript form. Designed by schoolteacher Benjamin Sands, the flap book’s focused choreography of vision and touch both emerged from and contributed to a period discourse of hands-on pedagogy. Reconstructing the Metamorphosis’s collisions with practices ranging from sampler embroidery to trompe l’oeil painting, I contend that the tactile image makes visible an early national conceptual framework of sensory observation and discernment that reached far beyond the classroom. Ultimately, I propose that the case of the Metamorphosis offers a new analytical lens for considering the interaction of material culture and fine art.