When displayed in museum cabinets, tactile objects that were once used in the education of blind and visually impaired people, appear to us, sighted visitors, as anything but tactile. We cannot touch them due to museum policies and we can hardly imagine what it would have been like for a blind person to touch them in their historical context. And yet these objects are all about touch, from the concrete act of touching something to the norms that assigned touch a specific pedagogical role in nineteenth-century blind schools. The aim of this article is twofold. First, I provide a historical background to the tactile objects of the blind. When did they appear as a specific category of pedagogical aid and how did they help determine the relation between blindness, vision, and touch? Second, I address the tactile objects from the point of view of empirical sources and historical evidence. Material objects are rarely used as historical testimonies for the simple reason that they, unlike archival material, do not present historians with written documents that can be held as evidence of the past. However, as I point out, certain historical questions of which archives remain silent could be approached by other means such as the use of material objects. Rather than delivering concrete methodological suggestions, this second part reflects upon the historical use of material objects - both their possibilities and their limits - within the context of blindness.