Check out our new website for Louis Braille's Bicentennial!
Keep in touch with friends and family in style - and celebrate Louis Braille's genius - with these gorgeous 4.25" x 5" note cards. Includes 10 cards and envelopes in a sturdy card box.
This image of Louis Braille was designed by artist Judith Krimski in celebration of the bicentennial of his birth on January 4, 2009. The challenge was to illustrate Louis's vitality today while honoring his place in history. Krimski chose the silhouette, a common form of French portraiture two hundred years ago (prior to the invention of the camera). Skilled artists made silhouettes by looking at a subject's profile, or side view, and cutting out just the outline of the face, freehand, on black paper. Within minutes, the artist could produce an image with a remarkable resemblance to the contours of the face of his subject. (Even today, iPod commercials portray silhouetted figures dancing to the music they're listening to on their iPods.) But to capture Louis's genius, Krimski ignited a "fire in his head" by painting Louis's naturally curly locks in vibrant colors - orange, purple, lime, teal - giving the image a decidedly current look. The space between his head and formal collar suggests a cravat, a long-strip neckband and forerunner to the necktie. Louis is facing left.
These 4.25" x 5" note cards feature the Louis icon described above. The number 200 appears in braille in the upper left-hand corner, in print on the right. Along the bottom are the words LOUIS BRAILLE in braille and print. The text on the back of the card, intended to educate the sighted public, reads:
Louis Braille Bicentennial
1809 - 2009
By age 15, Louis Braille had invented the basic braille code used today - giving blind people a universal means of written communication for
the first time in history.
[an image of a braille cell]
By raising different combinations of six dots in a braille cell, braille accommodates alphabets, numbers,
punctuation, music, math, and computer notation in all languages.
More Bicentennial gift ideas:
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