The Transmission of Technique and the Making of Art, 1500-1750

Only recently, historians have started to investigate a rich body of technical texts (recipes and instructions on how-to-make things) written and published in early modern Europe (1500-1750). Unfortunately, it remains hard to assess how the artisanal knowledge described in these texts corresponded to actual artisanal practice. This study therefore investigates, simply put, how early modern people used texts to learn how to do things.

It has been argued that the writing of technical texts was informed by various motives – i.e. the promotion of artisanal values, the preservation of crafts knowledge etc. – while the different modes of reading, collecting and circulating these texts point to the diverging functionalities they could have. Another layer of complexity is added by the supposed artisanal preference for oral transmission of knowledge over textual learning. Artisans believed that technique and skill were forms of bodily knowledge, know-how, that could not satisfactorily be confined to text. The French potter Bernard Palissy (c. 1510 – c. 1590) warned for example that text could never convey the experiences he had in learning his art. Based on these insights, historians have argued that the assumption of a non-compromised and binary relation between text and practice is no longer tenable. Hence, technical texts should be taken seriously, not as an accessory to, but rather as a defining and shaping element of material practice. This study attempts to do just that and intends to bridge the historical gap between textual and material practices. Given the wealth of early modern technical sources, and their indispensability for historians of science, art and technique to comprehend historical artisanal practices, there is an urgent need to investigate how technical texts functioned in relation to material practices and to understand how this relation evolved between 1500-1750.

To this end, a selection of texts has been made in the artisanal fields of glass, paint and metal production, which will be investigated through the combined efforts of textual analysis and historical reconstructions. Not only does this study provide in a better understanding of the complex interplay of textual and material practices, it also initiates new perspectives by combining the histories of text and reading with the history of materials, laboratories and experimentation. Ultimately, this study will contribute to the critical assessment of the historical textual sources that are currently being used in conservation and restoration practices.