Full Description
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.
Contents
List of Tables
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Foreword - Evelyn Welch
1. 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 - Susan Broomhall
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 - Leonie Hannan
PART II: Re-Making 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 - Jessie Wei-Hsuan Chen
8. Generating Bodies: Investigating Foundation Garments and Maternity through Making - Sarah A. Bendall and Catriona Fisk
Index
