Processes of making in early modern Europe were both tacit and embodied. Whether making pottery, food, or textiles, the processes of manual production rested on an intersensory connection between mind, body, and object. This volume focuses on the body of the maker to ask how processes of making, experimenting, experiencing, and reconstructing illuminate early modern assumptions and understandings around manual labour and material life. Answers can be gleaned through both recapturing past skills and knowledge of making and by reconstructing past bodies and bodily experiences using recreative and experimental approaches.
In drawing attention to the body, this collection underlines the importance of embodied knowledge and sensory experiences associated with the making practices of historically marginalised groups, such as craftspeople, women, domestic servants, and those who were colonised, to confront biases in the written archive. The history of making is found not only in technological and economic innovations which drove ‘progress’ but also in the hands, minds, and creations of makers themselves.
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- 1. Introduction: The Bodies of Makers
- Sarah A. Bendall and Serena Dyer
- Part I Making and Embodied Knowledge
- 2. Bodies and Gender Identities in the Making of Silk Fibre in Seventeenth-Century France
- 3. Bodies and Spices in the Early Modern European, South Asian, and Southeast Asian Worlds
- Amanda E. Herbert and Neha Vermani
- 4. Attending to the Tacit; or, Knowledge Trickles Upwards
- Part II Remaking and Embodied Experiences
- 5. ‘Your Companions Will Teach You’: Makers’ Knowledge in Renaissance Cosmetics Recipes
- Jill Burke and Wilson Poon
- 6. Beautiful Experiments: Reading and Reconstructing Early Modern European Cosmetic Recipes
- Erin Griffey with Michél Nieuwoudt
- 7. Remaking Sixteenth-Century Botanical Woodblocks: Embodied Artisanal Knowledge in Early Modern Woodcutting
- 8. Generating Bodies: Investigating Foundation Garments and Maternity Through Making
- Sarah A. Bendall and Catriona Fisk
- Index
- List of Illustrations and Tables
- Figure 2.1. Philippe Galle (engraver), after Jan van der Straet, in Jean-Baptiste Le Tellier, Brief discours contenant la manière de nourrir les vers à soye (Paris: Pierre Pautonnier, 1602), figure 5. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France.
- Figure 2.2. Le Tellier, Mémoires et instructions pour l’establissement des Meuriers & Art de faire la Soye en France (Paris: Jamet and Pierre Mettayer, 1603), 24. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France.
- Figure 2.3. Philippe Galle (engraver), after Jan van der Straet, in Jean-Baptiste Le Tellier, Brief discours contenant la manière de nourrir les vers à soye (Paris: Pierre Pautonnier, 1602), figure 3. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France.
- Figure 2.4. Philippe Galle (engraver), after Jan van der Straet, in Jean-Baptiste Le Tellier, Brief discours contenant la manière de nourrir les vers à soye (Paris: Pierre Pautonnier, 1602), figure 4. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France.
- Figure 2.5. Le Tellier, Mémoires et instructions pour l’establissement des Meuriers & Art de faire la Soye en France (Paris: Jamet and Pierre Mettayer, 1603), 14. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France.
- Figure 2.6. Philippe Galle (engraver), after Jan van der Straet, in Jean-Baptiste Le Tellier, Brief discours contenant la manière de nourrir les vers à soye (Paris: Pierre Pautonnier, 1602), figure 2. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France.
- Figure 3.1. Detail of three men holding weapons, from Hendrik van Reede tot Drakestein, Horti Indici Malabarici pars tertia de arboribus (Amsterdam, 1678). Wellcome Library London.
- Figure 3.2. Detail of people carrying fronds, from Hendrik van Reede tot Drakestein, Horti Indici Malabarici pars tertia de arboribus (Amsterdam, 1678). Wellcome Library London.
- Figure 3.3. Image of a man in Hendrik van Reede tot Drakestein, Horti Indici Malabarici pars tertia de arboribus (Amsterdam, 1678). Biodiversity Heritage Library via Wikimedia Commons.
- Figure 3.4. Detail of two men, from Hendrik van Reede tot Drakestein, Horti Indici Malabarici pars tertia de arboribus (Amsterdam, 1678). Wellcome Library London.
- Figure 5.1. Underlining in Giovanni Marinello, Ornamenti delle donne (Venice, 1562). Bologna, Biblioteca di Archiginnasio 11g.III.13. Photo: Jill Burke.
- Figure 5.2 Tallow becoming sticky whilst ‘washing’. Photo: Jill Burke.
- Figure 5.3 Tallow forming an emulsion after beating with egg white. Photo: Jill Burke.
- Figure 5.4 Frankincense (L) and mastic (R) ‘tears’ before crushing. Photo: Jill Burke.
- Figure 6.1. Preparation of boiled extract of rosemary flowers in sweet white wine.
- Figure 6.2. FTIR spectra of rosemary flowers boiled in sweet white wine (red) and of the boiled sweet white wine alone (blue). The spectra are overlaid for comparison of peak intensities.
- Figure 6.3. (A) GC-MS trace of the rosemary flower extract boiled in wine (B) GC-MS trace of the rosemary flower extract in 12.5% ethanol
- Figure 7.1. Reproduction woodblocks and their impressions. Author’s photo.
- Figure 7.2. Historical woodblock of a madder illustration. Museum Plantin-Moretus, Antwerp – UNESCO World Heritage, MPM.HB.05944.
- Figure 7.3. Historical woodblock of the Imperatoria illustration. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, RARE G Roller 2-2A.
- Figure 7.4. Tools for cutting reproduction woodblocks, with historical image reference. Author’s photo.
- Figure 8.1. Small scale paper patterns of two pairs of suspected eighteenth century maternity stays from the Museu del Disseny and Royal Ontario Museum.
- Figure 8.2. The Claydon House Maternity bodies mounted on a pregnant form.
- Figure 8.3. Reconstruction of the ROM maternity stays, modelled on a simulated pregnancy (L, C) and on non-pregnant body (R).
- Figure 8.4. Stays c.18th century at Museu del Disseny, MTIB 103875. Photo: Catriona Fisk. Credit: Museu del Disseny-DHub.
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