"Otti Berger was one of the most ingenious weavers and designers of the 20th century. She was on a par with her Bauhaus-friend Anni Albers, but Otti died in Auschwitz and was deprived of building her legacy” says Widar Halen, the Norwegian art historian and the curator of the exhibition “Starting at Zero” on Otti Berger at the Museum of Survivors, Brnenec, Czech Republic.
Otti Berger was hard of hearing but had a strong and sophisticated sense of touch for textiles. You can see a reproduction of the touch board she made above. Touch was used to teach all artists at the bauhaus. The touch board includes different materials, cotton, artificial silk, wool, metal, that could be touched and read with your fingers like an alphabet.
She wrote in the Czech Journal RED that “Textiles can be understood with the hands as much as colour to the eye or sound in the ear...Not simply the materiality of the object, but the emotions of sensation of touching of feeling materials...For one must listen to the fabric’s secrets, track down the sound of materials”.