Touching is Believing

As any parent knows, taking a child shopping, or almost anywhere really, usually involves over-usage of three handy words: "Don't touch that!" Kids, and adults too, can't help but touch things to find out more about them. Shopping for clothes is a constant judgment of the way fabrics feel. Buying china or crystal, you pick it up first. Ceramics designer Eva Zeisel won't declare a prototype up to snuff until she's run her hand across it.

So why aren't the things we touch everyday––light switches, steering wheels, computer keypads–– made to excite this important sense? That's the focus of the Victoria & Albert Museum's upcoming exhibition, Touch Me, showing June 16-Aug. 29. If you're in London, stop in and check it out. Then be sure to write to us and tell us how it feels.