The UK was on one of the rare occasions, ahead of the United States, when in 1967 It made the drug LSD an illegal substance. The USA was to follow in its footsteps the following year.
The drug had been in use worldwide, though not extensively, in the medical and psychiatric community for twenty years but during the heydays of the 1960s it had been adopted, for its psychedelic qualities by the counterculture. A movement of baby boomers that seemed to reject the social, economic and political values of their parents’ generation.
Sheets of absorbent A4 or smaller paper would be soaked in calibrated amounts of liquid LSD and these would be subdivided into 1⁄4 inch or centimeter squares.
These sheets would be decorated in imagery sometimes of an iconographic nature.
This somewhat unusual art form has over the years become highly collectable And original blank copies of designs dipped in LSD are highly sought after.
The image shows what is referred to as the ‘Holy Grail’ of blotter art, by Kevin Barron, the shield design co-signed by the discoverer of LSD, Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann and self-proclaimed acid guru Timothy Leary, command tens of thousands of dollars although rarely appears in the marketplace.
