An amusing optical toy for the hands?: reassessing nineteenth-century British paper peepshows through embodied knowledge

ABSTRACT

My article examines the structure of the nineteenth-century British paper peepshow and the experience of using it. Inspired by the agenda of media archaeology, I argue that an analysis of this medium that goes beyond excavating details of an obscured optical recreation can bring new insight into our understanding of peep media and nineteenth-century visual culture. By discussing the origin and circulation of the paper peepshow and detailing the clear distinction between it and media like the peepshow box and pop-up books, I detach the paper peepshow from the genealogy of these media while stressing the significance of its intermedial relationship with other nineteenth-century visual entertainments. I then adopt the notion of embodied knowledge to explore users’ engagement with this medium, drawing from personal handling experience in archives as well as theoretical conceptualisations. My article argues that peering into the paper peepshow should be understood as an act of creativity and imagination, and that the tactile played a crucial role in users’ interaction with this medium. This study thus fits well in debates about the embodied or multi-sensory vision in the nineteenth-century context, and functions as another example that affirms the active agency of users of visual recreations of this period. Overall, by analysing significant features of the paper peepshow and the experience of peeping into it, my research also constitutes a small but important expansion in the current understanding of peep media.

KEYWORDS:

• Paper peepshow
• optical toy
• intermediality
• embodied knowledge
• media archaeology

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Michael Rose and the anonymous reviewers for their comments. This work has been written with the generous support from Paul Mellon Centre Research Continuity Fellowship.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Due to my previous association with the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, I only included images of paper peepshows from this collection for practical reasons. The choice of images does not represent a focus on this collection, as many works discussed also have copies in many other collections.

2. My use of ‘peep media’ here borrows the definition from Huhtamo (2006, 142), footnote 9, which incorporates ‘all media devices that interface with their user via peeping – peering into a hole, a lens, a hood’ under this term.

3. There are different terms used for the structure of the paper peepshow, and I adopt Hyde’s version here, as illustrated in his annotated photograph that explains the paper peepshow structure (2015, 66–68).

4. The Areaorama, a View in the Regent’s Park, published by S. & J. Fuller, hand-coloured etching, 11.2 × 14 × 68 cm (expanded), 1825.

5. The Tunnel, attributed to Silvester & Co. Sc., hand-coloured etching and steel engraving, 12 × 14.5 × 66 cm (expanded), 1825.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Shijia Yu

Shijia Yu is an independent scholar, and Associate Research Fellow (2021-23) at Birkbeck, University of London. Drawing on media archaeology and material culture studies, Shijia’s research is interested in how the paper peepshow can be used as a tool to expand our understanding of nineteenth-century visual entertainments and print novelties, as well as the use of embodied knowledge in visual culture studies.