Anni Albers, On Weaving. 1965.
Chapter 8 : Tactile Sensibility
“All progress, so it seems, is coupled with regression elsewhere. We have advanced in general, for instance, in regard to verbal articulation – the reading and writing public of today is enormous. But we certainly have grown increasingly insensitive in our perception by touch, the tactile sense.
No wonder a faculty that is so largely unemployed in our daily plodding and bustling is degenerating. Our materials come to us already ground and chipped and crushed and powdered and mixed and sliced, so that only the finale in the long sequence of operations from matter to product is left to us: we merely toast the bread … Modern industry saves us endless labor and drudgery; … it also bars us from taking part in the forming of material and leaves idle our sense of touch, and with it those formative faculties that are stimulated by it.”
Design is fine. History is mine. 