Beatrix Potter for the Blind

Even today many children grow up with the magical tales of Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddle Duck and so on; but for many visually impaired children it has meant only words of creativity. That was until the ingenious, inspirational idea from Flintshire man, Colin Antwis who is to create 3D designs of the much loved characters. It also seems quite apt following Beatrix Potter’s vision impairment later on in her career.

Mr. Antwis achieved a successful two year contract after 6 months tireless negotiations with Chorion (the copyright holders of Potter’s drawings) and what an achievement it is as no-one before has ever been permitted to make any form of redesigns to the drawings. However, Antwis is to apply a technique to the drawings by making stronger lines and removing some of the finer details; he then draws these lines onto heat sensitive paper. Thus, when this paper is warmed up, the fibres within paper will rise up, with every bit rising higher the darker and thicker the colouring. This produces a 3D effect which both blind children and adults will be able to feel as opposed to just the Braille story as before.

Even though the contract is only for two years and Antwis has joked about the amount of work involved in creating all of the drawings that took Potter twenty years to complete, his dedication to enhancing visually impaired people’s lives is heart-warming. Before his involvement in Beatrix Potter he had created many accessible emergency route plans for the visually impaired. Therefore, it can be said that Beatrix Potter would be proud to see her work being enhanced in such a way. With sales already in high demand from his own website, Antwis is hoping to begin selling them on the Royal National Institute of Blind People’s website and has even commented that he’d love to work on Roald Dahl’s images next.

1st February 2010

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