Craft Techniques and Knowledge Systems in a 16th-Century Artist's Manuscript: An Open-Access Critical Edition and Translation

FAIN: RQ-249842-16

Columbia University (New York, NY 10027-7922)
Pamela H. Smith (Project Director: December 2015 to March 2022)
Marc Smith (Co Project Director: February 2016 to March 2022)

Preparation of an online open-access critical edition and translation of a 16th-century manuscript of an artist's recipes for painting and metalworking techniques and observations on scientific processes. See website at http://www.makingandknowing.org/.

The transcription, English translation, and open-access digital critical edition of a late 16th-century manuscript containing techniques, recipes, and experimental notes, written in French (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Ms. Fr. 640). This exceptionally detailed and self-reflective how-to text includes unprecedented information on techniques, materials, and observations from an artisan's workshop. It sheds light on the day-to-day creative process of the 16th-century craftsperson, and the acquisition and transmission of skilled practice. The edition’s critical commentary will demonstrate the continuity between the craft workshop and scientific laboratory at a pivotal moment in European history when artists began to write down their practices, and their methods provided models for the emerging experimental culture of a new philosophy—the nascent modern science. How-to texts like this manuscript gave rise to the culture of practical knowledge that underpinned the Scientific Revolution.

Media Coverage

A 500-year-old Artisanal Manuscript Yields Its Secrets (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Paul Hond
Publication: Columbia University Magazine
Date: 9/16/2019
URL: https://magazine.columbia.edu/article/500-year-old-artisanal-manuscript-yields-its-secrets

In the Lab with Naomi Rosenkranz (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Sofia Fortunato
Publication: SciArt Magazine
Date: 6/24/2019
URL: https://www.sciartmagazine.com/in-the-lab-naomi-rosenkranz.html

Twenty-First-Century Alchemists (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Sam Kean
Publication: The New Yorker
Date: 9/26/2016
URL: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/26/twenty-first-century-alchemists

Is Columbia’s Department System Ready to Evolve? (Media Coverage)
Publication: Columbia Spectator, Eye Magazine
Date: 10/23/2019
URL: https://www.columbiaspectator.com/eye-lead/2019/10/23/is-columbias-department-system-ready-to-evolve/?fbclid=IwAR0K_bKlPsjbKCzGTwM0PdI7JDtetyIWzpRtrRtaP6zYenIvC8ZSFcVyZ3Q

La science redécouvre les secrets de la Renaissance (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Bernadette Arnaud
Publication: Sciences et Avenir
Date: 4/6/2016
URL: https://www.makingandknowing.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Arnaud-Bernadette-La-Science-redecouvre-Sciences-Avenir-2016.pdf

Art + Alchemy (Media Coverage)
Publication: RISD News
Date: 11/11/2016
Abstract: Reports on a collaboration between the Glass Department at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and the Making and Knowing Project. The teams attempted to reconstruct pre-modern recipes for ruby glass, a difficult process for making red-colored glass.
URL: https://www.risd.edu/news/stories/art-alchemy/

Pamela H. Smith on the Significance of Microscopic Records for Renaissance How-To Knowledge (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Stefan Hanß
Date: 7/22/2020
Abstract: The research of Pamela H. Smith, Seth Low Professor of History and Director of the Center for Science and Society at Columbia University, inspires early modern historians all around the globe. She published widely on early modern alchemy, crafts, and materiality, and is the founding director of The Making and Knowing Project. Since 2014, members of the team explore the intersections of early modern crafts and sciences in a late sixteenth-century French manuscript containing around 930 entries on artistic and technical “recipes”; detailed how-to instructions, many of which were tried out, experimented with, and annotated by what you called an “author-practitioner”.
URL: https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/microscopic-records/

History professor Pamela Smith’s Making and Knowing Project uses craft making to understand 16th-century science (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Beatrice Moyers
Publication: Columbia Spectator
Date: 10/5/2022
URL: https://www.columbiaspectator.com/arts-and-culture/2022/10/05/history-professor-pamela-smiths-making-and-knowing-project-uses-craft-making-to-understand-16th-century-science/

From Lived Experience to the Written Word (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Jana Byars
Publication: New Book Network
Date: 12/19/2022
URL: https://newbooksnetwork.com/from-lived-experience-to-the-written-word

Scientific searches for dragon’s blood and the perfect burrito (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Rick Mullin
Publication: Chemical and Engineering News
Date: 10/24/2016
Abstract: The Making & Knowing Project (C&EN, Aug. 3, 2015, page 35) is as concerned with the art associated with materials as it is with the science, says Pamela H. Smith, a science historian at Columbia who directs the lab. “We are definitely interested in the movements of the late-16th/early-17th century in which university-trained people were very interested in the practices of craftspeople, collecting their recipes, their processes, and materials,” Smith says. “At the same time, there was an ambition on the part of craftspeople to be seen as on the same social and intellectual level as people trained at university.” Smith and her associates are also concerned with the status of craft in a modern world where science and art long ago took separate paths but never left the Garden of Earthly Delights, or the human engagement with natural materials, as Smith describes it.
URL: https://cen.acs.org/articles/94/i42/Scientific-searches-dragons-blood-perfect.html

In an Ancient Workshop, Discovering Modern Ideas (Media Coverage)
Publication: Columbia Magazine
Date: 12/1/2015
Abstract: Walk into the basement of Columbia’s Chandler Hall, and you enter sixteenthcentury Europe: leather-clad artisans are melting tin in an iron crucible, boiling elm roots in red wine, and coating roses, dead insects, and taxidermied lizards with butter and wheat oil. After a few hours of work, they will have created exquisitely detailed pewter replicas of the flora and fauna — gifts suitable for any aristocrat.
URL: https://magazine.columbia.edu/article/ancient-workshop-discovering-modern-ideas

Could Doing Things The Old-Fashioned Way Make Us Better Modern Scientists? (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Kate Baggeley
Publication: Popular Science
Date: 3/19/2020
Abstract: Today, we imagine lab experiments as part of a separate realm from fine arts like painting or trades like carpentry. But artisans helped lay the groundwork for the scientific revolution. For the past five years, Pamela Smith, a historian of science at Co-lumbia University in New York, has devoted herself to re-creating their long-forgotten techniques. “So much exploration, experimen-tation, and innovation happens in craft,” she says. “It’s the same as science; it’s the human exploration of the material world.”
URL: https://www.makingandknowing.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Smith_Popular-Science-Magazine.pdf

Engineering the Future of Cultural Preservation (Media Coverage)
Publication: Columbia Engineering Magazine
Date: 12/13/2019
Abstract: When historian Pamela Smith first set out to produce scholarly work on a previously unknown 16th-century French manuscript, she knew the end result would live in a digital format; she just imagined it would be a fairly conventional one. Then she met computer scientist Steve Feiner, and began to imagine how augmented reality (AR) could turn that idea on its head.
URL: https://magazine.engineering.columbia.edu/web-exclusive-engineering-future-cultural-preservation

Is Columbia’s Department System Ready to Evolve? (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Allison Stewart
Publication: Columbia Spectator Eye Magazine
Date: 10/23/2019
Abstract: On the second floor of Chandler, a building tucked within Havemeyer, Pamela Smith shows me a bucket of sand from Toulouse, France. She is showing me how her classes make molds for portrait metal the way a 16th-century French manuscript had described it. The sand is coarse, with larger nuggets the color of mud that will be heated with vinegar to be broken down to a finer consistency. The director of the Center for Science and Society and professor in the history department, Smith runs the Making and Knowing Project, which is a part of the center. It’s a project that, studying a single manuscript, performs craft recipes like verdigris pigment “growing,” cuttlefish bone casting, floral preservationism, and taxidermy. As Smith realized when she began studying the metal casting recipes, “I just cannot understand this unless I know how to do it.”
URL: https://www.columbiaspectator.com/eye-lead/2019/10/23/is-columbias-department-system-ready-to-evolve/?fbclid=IwAR0K_bKlPsjbKCzGTwM0PdI7JDtetyIWzpRtrRtaP6zYenIvC8ZSFcVyZ3Q

Une collaboration scientifique inédite LE MAKING AND KNOWING PROJECT (Media Coverage)
Publication: Musee des Augustins
Date: 4/13/2020
Abstract: Announcement and summary of the Making and Knowing Project's publication of Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France, its digital critical edition.

Associated Products

The Making and Knowing Project (Web Resource)
Title: The Making and Knowing Project
Author: Pamela Smith
Abstract: The Making and Knowing Project is a research and pedagogical initiative in the Center for Science and Society at Columbia University that explores the intersections between artistic making and scientific knowing. Today these realms are regarded as separate, yet in the earliest phases of the Scientific Revolution, nature was investigated primarily by skilled artisans by means of continuous and methodical experimentation in the making of objects – the time when “making” was “knowing.”
Year: 2016
Primary URL: http://www.makingandknowing.org/

Prizes

Eugene S. Ferguson Prize
Date: 10/24/2019
Organization: Society for the History of Technology
Abstract: The Eugene S. Ferguson Prize is awarded biennially by SHOT for an outstanding and original reference work that supports future scholarship in the history of technology. The Ferguson Prize recognizes work that is in the tradition of scholarly excellence established by Eugene S. Ferguson (1916-2004), SHOT’s pioneering bibliographer, a founding member of the Society (President, 1977-1978; da Vinci Medalist, 1977), museum curator and exhibit catalog author, editor, annotator, university professor, and scholar of the history of engineering and technology.

Historians in the Laboratory: Reconstruction of Renaissance Art and Technology in the Making and Knowing Project (Article)
Title: Historians in the Laboratory: Reconstruction of Renaissance Art and Technology in the Making and Knowing Project
Author: Pamela H. Smith, and Making and Knowing Project members
Abstract: This article examines the nature of "how to" texts by focusing on Ms. Fr. 640, in order to understand what kind of knowledge it contains. To analyze the text, reconstruction of the processes included it in were carried out in a laboratory. These reconstructions give insight into the material and conceptual world of the anonymous practitioner who authored this text.
Year: 2016
Primary URL: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8365.12235
Primary URL Description: full text or download pdf
Access Model: open access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Art History
Publisher: Wiley

The Making and Knowing Project - Reflections, Methods, and New Directions (Article)
Title: The Making and Knowing Project - Reflections, Methods, and New Directions
Author: Donna Bilak
Author: Jenny Boulboulle
Author: Joel Klein
Author: Pamela H. Smith
Abstract: The Making and Knowing Project is a five-year initiative to create an open-access digital critical edition of an intriguing late sixteenth-century French manuscript, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Fr. 640. This anonymous manuscript contains techniques, recipes, and notes on processes and products that are now classified as part of the fine arts, the crafts, and mechanics. Our study of the manuscript has shown that the text is the written result of actual workshop practice in the sixteenth century, thus providing unique insight into craft and artistic techniques, daily life in the sixteenth century, and material and intellectual understandings of the natural world. Through text- and object-based research and hands-on reconstruction, the Project’s researchers seek understanding of the materials and techniques in the manuscript and the context out of which this compilation of technical recipes arose.
Year: 2016
Primary URL: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/688199
Access Model: open access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture
Publisher: University of Chicago Press

The Making and Knowing Project lifecastings in Toulouse Renaissance, Musée des Augustins, Toulouse (Exhibition)
Title: The Making and Knowing Project lifecastings in Toulouse Renaissance, Musée des Augustins, Toulouse
Curator: Alex Hemery
Curator: Pascal Julien
Abstract: Description of and objects from the reconstructions of the Making and Knowing Project.
Year: 2018
Primary URL: https://www.augustins.org/fr/web/guest/-/toulouse-renaissance

Des recettes et des secrets à l’expérience: le “Making and Knowing Project" (Book Section)
Title: Des recettes et des secrets à l’expérience: le “Making and Knowing Project"
Author: Pamela H. Smith
Editor: Pascal Julien
Editor: Alex Hemery
Abstract: Description of the Making and Knowing Project and of its reconstructions of lifecasting.
Year: 2018
Access Model: Published book
Publisher: Paris: Somogy éditions d’art
Book Title: Toulouse Renaissance, Musée des Augustins, Toulouse
ISBN: 9782757213605

The Making and Knowing Project (Book Section)
Title: The Making and Knowing Project
Author: Pamela H. Smith
Abstract: Description of the Making and Knowing Project
Year: 2017
Primary URL: https://www.bookdepository.com/Il-Disegno-dal-Vero-Come-Pratica-Storica-e-Sapere-Contemporaneo-LAccademia-%C3%80-lAcad%C3%A9mie/9788875752705
Primary URL Description: publication for sale
Access Model: Published book
Publisher: Artemide Edizioni
Book Title: L’Accademia a l’Académie: il disegno dal vero come pratica storica e sapere contemporaneo
ISBN: 9788875752705

Smoke and Silkworms: The Movement of Material Complexes across Eurasia (Book Section)
Title: Smoke and Silkworms: The Movement of Material Complexes across Eurasia
Author: Pamela H. Smith
Author: Joslyn DeVinney
Author: Sasha Grafit
Author: Xiaoming Liu
Editor: Pamela H. Smith
Abstract: Two case studies from Ms. Fr. 640 illustrate the movement of material complexes (amalgamations of concepts, practices, and materials) across Eurasia.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/book/66002
Primary URL Description: Publisher's website
Access Model: Published book
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Book Title: Entangled Itineraries of Materials, Practices, and Knowledges Across Eurasia
ISBN: 9780822965770

Learning Through Reconstruction: The Making and Knowing Project (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Learning Through Reconstruction: The Making and Knowing Project
Abstract: Description of the Making and Knowing Project, its methods of reconstruction, and the insights gained through reconstructions.
Author: Pamela H. Smith
Date: 7/31/2018
Location: Yale University Art Gallery
Primary URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlOyAdg1Td4
Primary URL Description: Youtube video of the lecture

Of Lizards, Laboratories, and History: The Making and Knowing Project (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Of Lizards, Laboratories, and History: The Making and Knowing Project
Abstract: The Making and Knowing Project and its combination of historical, art, and scientific methods.
Author: Pamela H. Smith
Date: 03/20/2019
Location: Dibner Lecture in the History of Science, Huntington Library, California

Des secrets d’atelier de la Renaissance à l’expérimentation contemporaine/ Making Art and the Origins of Science (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Des secrets d’atelier de la Renaissance à l’expérimentation contemporaine/ Making Art and the Origins of Science
Abstract: The role of artisanal workshops and knowledge in the scientific revolution.
Author: Pamela H. Smith
Date: 07/11/2018
Location: World Science Festival, Toulouse, France

Entangled Itineraries: Materials, Practices, and Knowledges across Eurasia (Book)
Title: Entangled Itineraries: Materials, Practices, and Knowledges across Eurasia
Editor: Pamela H. Smith
Abstract: Trade flowed across Eurasia, around the Indian Ocean, and over the Mediterranean for millennia, but in the early modern period, larger parts of the globe became connected through these established trade routes. Knowledge, embodied in various people, materials, texts, objects, and practices, also moved and came together along these routes in hubs of exchange where different social and cultural groups intersected and interacted. Entangled Itineraries traces this movement of knowledge across the Eurasian continent from the early years of the Common Era to the nineteenth century, following local goods, techniques, tools, and writings as they traveled and transformed into new material and intellectual objects and ways of knowing. Focusing on nonlinear trajectories of knowledge in motion, this volume follows itineraries that weaved in and out of busy, crowded cosmopolitan cities in China; in the trade hubs of Kucha and Malacca; and in centers of Arabic scholarship, such as Reyy and Baghdad, which resonated in Bursa, Assam, and even as far as southern France. Contributors explore the many ways in which materials, practices, and knowledge systems were transformed and codified as they converged, swelled, at times disappeared, and often reemerged anew.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvh9vzc1
Primary URL Description: DOI is 10.2307/j.ctvh9vzc1
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Type: Edited Volume
ISBN: 9780822965770

Thinking and Experiencing Techne (Blog Post)
Title: Thinking and Experiencing Techne
Author: V&A/RCA and M&K collaboration
Abstract: A collaboration between the Making and Knowing Project and the V&A/RCA postgraduate programme in History of Design.
Abstract: A collaboration between the Making and Knowing Project and the V&A/RCA postgraduate programme in History of Design to create and research varnish recipes from BnF Ms. Fr. 640.
Date: 12/30/2017
Primary URL: https://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/tag/techne
Primary URL Description: Multiple blog posts about the collaboration between the V&A/RCA and Making and Knowing Project.
Website: Victoria and Albert Museum, V&A Blog, Techne

Filming the History of Design Experimental Lab Class (Blog Post)
Title: Filming the History of Design Experimental Lab Class
Author: Charlotte Slark
Author: Vivien Chan
Abstract: A collaboration between the Making and Knowing Project and the V&A/RCA postgraduate programme in the History of Design to create and study varnishes contained in BnF Ms. Fr. 640.
Date: 1/26/2017
Primary URL: https://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/projects/filming-the-history-of-design-experimental-lab-class
Website: Victoria and Albert Museum, V&A Blog, Techne

Minimal Digital Edition of the Transcriptions and Translations of Ms. Fr. 640 (Web Resource)
Title: Minimal Digital Edition of the Transcriptions and Translations of Ms. Fr. 640
Author: The Making and Knowing Project
Abstract: A minimal edition prototype for the Making and Knowing Project's digital critical Edition of BnF Ms. Fr. 640.
Year: 2018
Primary URL: https://cu-mkp.github.io/2017-workshop-edition/

Prototype - Minimal Digital Edition of the Working English Translation of BnF Ms. Fr. 640 (Web Resource)
Title: Prototype - Minimal Digital Edition of the Working English Translation of BnF Ms. Fr. 640
Author: The Making and Knowing Project
Abstract: A minimal edition prototype for the Making and Knowing Project's digital critical Edition of BnF Ms. Fr. 640. This prototype was created by students in the Project's 2017 Digital Humanities seminar (Hist GR8975), "What is a Book for the 21st Century?"
Year: 2017
Primary URL: https://cu-mkp.github.io/GR8975-edition/

The Making and Knowing Project - 11 films about the Project and its Lab (Film/TV/Video Broadcast or Recording)
Title: The Making and Knowing Project - 11 films about the Project and its Lab
Writer: Lan Li
Director: Lan Li
Producer: Tianna Uchacz
Abstract: Eleven videos that introduce the Making and Knowing Project, its Laboratory, and the research undertaken in it.
Year: 2017
Primary URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5vq6yHF8eg&list=PL9JDAfbqTXnOOXbIAW6dML7kxKsWJFY8B
Primary URL Description: Eleven videos that introduce the Making and Knowing Project, its Laboratory, and the research undertaken in it.
Access Model: open access
Format: Video

A Recipe for Recipe Research: The Making and Knowing Project (Blog Post)
Title: A Recipe for Recipe Research: The Making and Knowing Project
Author: Pamela H. Smith
Abstract: The post describes the various components of the Making and Knowing Project, and describes its methodology and insights from its research.
Date: 2/23/2016
Primary URL: https://recipes.hypotheses.org/7430
Blog Title: A Recipe for Recipe Research: The Making and Knowing Project
Website: The Recipes Project

Making ‘powder for hourglasses’ in the early modern household (Blog Post)
Title: Making ‘powder for hourglasses’ in the early modern household
Author: Stephanie Pope
Abstract: This post describes powder for hourglasses, as described in Ms. Fr. 640 on fol. 10r, and discusses the surprising finding that this powder was produced in a domestic setting in early modern Europe.
Date: 2/25/2016
Primary URL: https://recipes.hypotheses.org/7502
Website: The Recipes Project

Making and Knowing - Sian Lewis and Andrew Lacey Residency (Film/TV/Video Broadcast or Recording)
Title: Making and Knowing - Sian Lewis and Andrew Lacey Residency
Writer: Sian Lewis
Director: Sian Lewis
Producer: Sian Lewis
Abstract: Film provides an overview of the process for casting from life, as derived from BnF Ms. Fr. 640.
Year: 2016
Primary URL: https://player.vimeo.com/video/135551089
Format: Film

New Directions in Making and Knowing (Article)
Title: New Directions in Making and Knowing
Author: Pamela H. Smith
Abstract: This special issue on new directions in making and knowing follows on the recent publication of Ways of Making and Knowing: The Material Culture of Empirical Knowledge (2014), coedited by Pamela H. Smith, Amy R. W. Meyers, and Harold J. Cook, published in the Bard Graduate Center series Cultural Histories of the Material World. That volume and the interdisciplinary conference in 2005 that gave rise to it aimed to show the ways that “making” and “knowing” are not just related or part of a multistage process—that making constitutes knowing over time—but that making is actually constitutive of knowing in a scientific sense. The five-day conference involved more than seventy participants, and it included scholarly lectures and—more unusual ten years ago—object-based breakout sessions that brought academic scholars together with museum scholars, curators, conservators, and practitioners of the arts. The attendees gathered around objects brought from multiple collections of the great London museums to discuss the modes of making and knowing that had been employed in the objects’ fabrication, as well as to examine the ways in which natural materials had been used and the means by which nature and its materials were represented in those objects. The long process by which that conference and its many insights were whittled down into a standard-length book format filled largely with scholarly essays proved to be long and somewhat dispiriting. We found, as any early modern artist knew, that text just was not an optimal vehicle for object-based interdisciplinary discussion of making processes. To his credit, the glassmaker Ian Hankey submitted his contribution to the volume in the form of a wonderfully instructive video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSBY6Lc2-hU), which, however, could not be successfully integrated into the book format.
Year: 2016
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.1086/688197
Access Model: open access
Format: Journal
Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Three Recipes for Historical Reconstruction (Article)
Title: Three Recipes for Historical Reconstruction
Author: Kathryn Kremnitzer
Author: Siddhartha V. Shah
Author: Wenrui Zhao
Abstract: Three PhD students in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University recount their experiences of a collaborative hands-on approach to the humanities, at the intersection of craft and science. As participants in the “Laboratory Seminar” component of the “Making and Knowing Project,” under the direction of Professor Pamela Smith, each was responsible for reconstructing, annotating, and contextualizing historical recipes from a sixteenth-century French manuscript. Working both in and beyond their chemistry lab, the authors reflect on the unique challenges and unexpected rewards of learning by doing, stepping outside of academic comfort zones, and finding success in failure. The compiling of these collective encounters depended on cooperation and coordination, as the authors worked across continents—via email, phone, text, and video chat—in keeping with the project’s international, interdisciplinary, and innovative working methods. This contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium “Inside the Humanities Classroom” represents individual perspectives on a dynamic and demanding group project that the participants feel, in retrospect, had much in common with a Renaissance workshop.
Year: 2018
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-6939781
Access Model: open access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Common Knowledge
Publisher: Duke University Press

The Matter of Ephemeral Art: Craft, Spectacle, and Power in Early Modern Europe (Article)
Title: The Matter of Ephemeral Art: Craft, Spectacle, and Power in Early Modern Europe
Author: Pamela H. Smith
Author: Tianna Helena Uchacz
Author: Sophie Pitman
Author: Tillmann Taape
Author: Colin Debuiche
Abstract: Through a close reading and reconstruction of technical recipes for ephemeral artworks in a manuscript compiled in Toulouse ca. 1580 (BnF MS Fr. 640), we question whether ephemeral art should be treated as a distinct category of art. The illusion and artifice underpinning ephemeral spectacles shared the aims and, frequently, the materials and techniques of art more generally. Our analysis of the manuscript also calls attention to other aspects of art making that reframe consideration of the ephemeral, such as intermediary processes, durability, the theatrical and transformative potential of materials, and the imitation and preservation of lifelikeness.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/renaissance-quarterly/article/matter-of-ephemeral-art-craft-spectacle-and-power-in-early-modern-europe/45366084D72E61713504E59F4AC59E88
Primary URL Description: Link to Renaissance Quarterly in JStOR
Access Model: access through Cambridge University Press and Renaissance Society of America
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Renaissance Quarterly
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Practical Knowledge in Early Modern Europe (Book Section)
Title: Practical Knowledge in Early Modern Europe
Author: Pamela H. Smith
Editor: Lia Markey
Abstract: This essay argues that, while the “new discoveries,” the inventions of novelties, things, and machines are no doubt a central dimension of Stradanus' Nova Reperta print series, many of the prints instead, or, in addition, foreground the skilled work and creative potential of the human hand and the industry of artisans by which valuable goods and knowledge were produced. Indeed, it could be argued that the series as a whole focuses less on discrete inventions and discoveries than on the processes and processual knowledge of ars—the work of the human hand—and its potential for transformation of the material and human worlds.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://www.newberry.org/renaissance-invention
Primary URL Description: Link to publication information
Access Model: exhibition catalog for an exhibt that will be available online
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Book Title: Renaissance Invention: Stradanus’s Nova Reperta
ISBN: 978-0-8101-420

Science in the City - Making and Knowing in Early Modern Europe (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Science in the City - Making and Knowing in Early Modern Europe
Abstract: The Metropolitan Science Project aims to, “consider alternative locations and institutional contexts for the construction of science, and this lecture considers these alternative locations and institutional contexts, namely artisanal workshops embedded within the city of Toulouse. I argue that in these workshops, as well as in how-to recipe texts, "making is knowing." I also wish to point out that that cities fostered an interest in and a culture of practical knowledge, particularly those cities with large immigrant populations of artisans and practitioners, those with resident courts of governing nobles, or with concentrations of entrepreneurial printers. These all were spaces of vibrant knowledge production in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe.
Author: Pamela H. Smith
Date: 4/6/2020
Location: Virtual Conference hosted in London
Primary URL: https://youtu.be/sbK8TRoS_m4
Primary URL Description: YouTube video of the lecture.
Secondary URL: https://metsci.wordpress.com/category/metropolitan-science/science-in-the-city/
Secondary URL Description: The conference, "Science in the City," organized by the Metropolitan Science Project.

Knowing by Making - an Interview with Pamela Smith (Radio/Audio Broadcast or Recording)
Title: Knowing by Making - an Interview with Pamela Smith
Writer: Sophie Pitman
Director: Sophie Pitman
Director: Paula Hohti
Producer: Refashioning the Renaissance
Abstract: Refashioning the Renaissance Principal Investigator Paula Hohti Erichsen and Postdoctoral Researcher Sophie Pitman talk about experimental methodology with Professor Pamela H. Smith, founder of the Making and Knowing Project at Columbia University. The discussion spans form the work done at the M&K project and the lessons learned, to different ways experiments can be approached and the future of reconstruction.
Date: 03/15/2019
Primary URL: https://soundcloud.com/user-265326599/2-making-by-knowing-with-pamela-smith
Primary URL Description: Podcast interview
Secondary URL: http://refashioningrenaissance.eu/
Secondary URL Description: Refashioning the Renaissance Project website
Access Model: open access
Format: Web

Craft Knowledge and Creativity from the Past made ready for the Future (Radio/Audio Broadcast or Recording)
Title: Craft Knowledge and Creativity from the Past made ready for the Future
Director: Mark Fallows
Producer: The Impossible Network
Abstract: Pamela explains the Making and Knowing project and the fusion of disciplines to study the connection between craft and science
Date: 2/19/2020
Primary URL: https://play.acast.com/s/theimpossiblenetwork/d3a58982-5007-4c2a-964f-0e4e11a97514
Primary URL Description: link to the recording
Secondary URL: https://theimpossiblenetwork.com/
Secondary URL Description: The podcast that explores the serendipitous stories of curious-minded, purposeful people.
Access Model: open access
Format: Web

Making the Edition of Ms. Fr. 640 (Article)
Title: Making the Edition of Ms. Fr. 640
Author: Pamela H. Smith
Abstract: This essay describes the Making and Knowing Project’s creation of the Digital Critical Edition of Ms. Fr. 640 through interdisciplinary pedagogy and research. It elaborates the various components of the Project, including Text Workshops, Laboratory and Digital Seminars, institutional collaborations, and digital design and development. The potentials and pitfalls of the method of historical reconstruction in a laboratory are discussed, and an introductory survey of insights gained through the student research in texts, objects, and hands-on laboratory work is provided.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://edition640.makingandknowing.org/#/essays/ann_329_ie_19
Primary URL Description: Smith, Pamela H. “Making the Edition of Ms. Fr. 640.” In Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France. A Digital Critical Edition and English Translation of BnF Ms. Fr. 640, edited by Making and Knowing Project, Pamela H. Smith, Naomi Rosenkranz, Tianna Helena Uchacz, Tillmann Taape, Clément Godbarge, Sophie Pitman, Jenny Boulboullé, Joel Klein, Donna Bilak, Marc Smith, and Terry Catapano. New York: Making and Knowing Project, 2020. https://edition640.makingandknowing.org/#/essays/ann_329_ie_19. DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.7916/zdaf-cv31
Secondary URL: https://www.doi.org/10.7916/zdaf-cv31
Secondary URL Description: DOI
Access Model: open access
Format: Other
Periodical Title: Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France. A Digital Critical Edition and English Translation of BnF Ms. Fr. 640
Publisher: The Making and Knowing Project

Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France. A Digital Critical Edition and English Translation of BnF Ms. Fr. 640 (Database/Archive/Digital Edition)
Title: Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France. A Digital Critical Edition and English Translation of BnF Ms. Fr. 640
Author: Pamela H. Smith
Author: The Making and Knowing Project
Author: Naomi Rosenkranz
Author: Tianna Helena Uchacz
Author: Tillmann Taape
Author: Clement Godbarge
Author: Sophie Pitman
Author: Jenny Boulboulle
Author: Joel Klein
Author: Donna Bilak
Author: Marc Smith
Author: Terry Catapano
Abstract: A production of the Making and Knowing Project, this edition provides a transcription and English translation of Ms. Fr. 640, composed by an anonymous “author-practitioner” in 1580s Toulouse and now held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France. This manuscript offers unique firsthand insight into making and materials from a time when artists were scientists. The research resources in this edition explore the manuscript’s context and diverse topics.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://edition640.makingandknowing.org
Primary URL Description: Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France. A Digital Critical Edition and English Translation of BnF Ms. Fr. 640
Secondary URL: https://doi.org/10.7916/78yt-2v41
Secondary URL Description: DOI: Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France. A Digital Critical Edition and English Translation of BnF Ms. Fr. 640
Access Model: open access

Prizes

The Ferguson Prize
Date: 10/26/2019
Organization: Society for the History of Technology

An Introduction to Ms. Fr. 640 and Its Author-Practitioner (Article)
Title: An Introduction to Ms. Fr. 640 and Its Author-Practitioner
Author: Pamela H. Smith
Abstract: This critical edition of the late sixteenth-century anonymous manuscript cataloged as Ms. Fr. 640 in the Bibliothèque nationale de France was created through the work of team members, students, and collaborators of the Making and Knowing Project at Columbia University. The technical and artistic “recipes” contained in Ms. Fr. 640 provide an outstanding opportunity to explore the epistemic and historical intersections between craft making and scientific knowing, especially in light of the emergence of a new science in the following centuries. Ms. Fr. 640 provides important insights into the material, technical, and intellectual worlds of late sixteenth-century Europe, and brings a better understanding of how and why nature was investigated, used in art, and collected and appreciated in early modern Europe. It sheds light, as well, on the type of knowledge possessed by handworkers, known today as “practical knowledge,” “how-to,” or “makers’ knowledge.” At the heart of the Edition of Ms. Fr. 640, however, lies an intriguing puzzle: who was the anonymous individual who wrote down (and in many cases tried out) these 930 entries filling 170 folios, and why did a French nobleman collect and preserve this manuscript?
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://edition640.makingandknowing.org/#/essays/ann_300_ie_19
Primary URL Description: Smith, Pamela H. “An Introduction to Ms. Fr. 640 and its Author-Practitioner.” In Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France. A Digital Critical Edition and English Translation of BnF Ms. Fr. 640, edited by Making and Knowing Project, Pamela H. Smith, Naomi Rosenkranz, Tianna Helena Uchacz, Tillmann Taape, Clément Godbarge, Sophie Pitman, Jenny Boulboullé, Joel Klein, Donna Bilak, Marc Smith, and Terry Catapano. New York: Making and Knowing Project, 2020. https://edition640.makingandknowing.org/#/essays/ann_300_ie_19. DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.7916/ny3t-qg71
Secondary URL: https://www.doi.org/10.7916/ny3t-qg71
Secondary URL Description: DOI
Access Model: open access
Format: Other
Periodical Title: Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France. A Digital Critical Edition and English Translation of BnF Ms. Fr. 640
Publisher: The Making and Knowing Project

The Making of Empirical Knowledge: Recipes, Craft, and Scholarly Communication (Book Section)
Title: The Making of Empirical Knowledge: Recipes, Craft, and Scholarly Communication
Author: Pamela H. Smith
Author: Tianna Helena Uchacz
Author: Naomi Rosenkranz
Author: Claire Conklin Sabel
Editor: Martin Eve
Editor: Jonathan Gray
Abstract: A critical inquiry into the politics, practices, and infrastructures of open access and the reconfiguration of scholarly communication in digital societies. As one of several “case-study” pieces in this volume, this essay first discusses the genre of how-to texts as a platform for a new type of communication of knowledge in the past as well as their role in the development of the massive infrastructure that we know today as “modern science.”
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11885.003.0014
Primary URL Description: Book Chapter: The Making of Empirical Knowledge: Recipes, Craft, and Scholarly Communication
Secondary URL: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/reassembling-scholarly-communications
Secondary URL Description: Reassembling Scholarly Communications: Histories, Infrastructures, and Global Politics of Open Access
Access Model: open access
Publisher: MIT Press
Book Title: Reassembling Scholarly Communications: Histories, Infrastructures, and Global Politics of Open Access
ISBN: 9780262536240

Schooling the Eye and Hand: performative methods of research and pedagogy in the Making and Knowing Project (Article)
Title: Schooling the Eye and Hand: performative methods of research and pedagogy in the Making and Knowing Project
Author: Tillmann Taape
Author: Tianna Helena Uchacz
Author: Pamela H. Smith
Abstract: What are historians doing in the laboratory? Looking back over six years of collaborative work, researchers of the Making and Knowing Project at Columbia University discuss their experience with hands‐on reconstruction as a historical method. This work engages practical forms of knowledge—from pigment‐making to metal casting—recorded in the BnF Ms. Fr. 640, an anonymous French manuscript compiled in the later sixteenth century. Bodily encounters with materials and processes of the past offer insights into the material and mental worlds of early modern artists and artisans, and train the eye in the interpretation of historical objects. At the same time, reconstruction contributes to the interpretation of the text: it is only by attempting to implement the instructions of practical or recipe literature that these texts can be understood as vehicles of emergent knowledge that only fully manifests itself in the doing. Overall, our approach to reconstruction mirrors that of the anonymous author‐practitioner, who explored a wide range of techniques through experimenting and writing.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bewi.202000004
Primary URL Description: Special Issue, “Rethinking Performative Methods in the History of Science.” Guest Editor, Marieke M. A. Hendriksen. Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Vol. 43 (2020)
Access Model: paid
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte
Publisher: Beitrag

Making Senses: Artisanal Practice and Sensory Perception in an Early Modern French Manuscript (Blog Post)
Title: Making Senses: Artisanal Practice and Sensory Perception in an Early Modern French Manuscript
Author: Tillmann Taape
Abstract: Ms Fr. 640 was written in French by an unknown craftsperson in Toulouse, likely between 1580 and 1600. [1] It is an intriguing and eclectic source, with entries ranging from medical recipes to metalwork and pigment-making, and it forms the core of the Making and Knowing Project at Columbia University, introduced previously on the Recipes Blog in a post by our Director, Pamela Smith.
Date: 1/5/2018
Primary URL: https://recipes.hypotheses.org/10504
Blog Title: The Recipes Project
Website: The Recipes Project

Around the Table: The Making and Knowing Project (Blog Post)
Title: Around the Table: The Making and Knowing Project
Author: Sarah Kernan
Author: Tillmann Taape
Abstract: This month on Around the Table, we have a very special treat. Many of our contributors have been a part of the Making and Knowing Project and we have enjoyed occasional updates on the project throughout the years. Here, we have an update and reflection provided by previous Recipes Project contributor Tillmann Taape, in coordination with his former Making and Knowing team.
Date: 8/10/2020
Primary URL: https://recipes.hypotheses.org/17539
Blog Title: The Recipes Project
Website: The Recipes Project

Recipes for Failure: Experimenting, Repairing, and Quitting in Renaissance Toulouse (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Recipes for Failure: Experimenting, Repairing, and Quitting in Renaissance Toulouse
Author: Tianna Helena Uchacz
Abstract: Lecture at the Online conference "Failure: Understanding Art as Process, 1150–1750", organized by Ariella Minden, Alessandro Nova, and Luca Palozzi (05 - 06 November 2020)
Date: 11/06/2020
Primary URL: https://vimeo.com/487139383
Primary URL Description: Video of talk
Secondary URL: https://www.khi.fi.it/en/aktuelles/veranstaltungen/2020/11/Failure_Understanding_Art_as_Process.php
Secondary URL Description: Conference website
Conference Name: Failure: Understanding Art as Process, 1150–1750

Out of the Ivy and into the Arctic: Imitation Coral Reconstruction in Cross-Cultural Contexts (Article)
Title: Out of the Ivy and into the Arctic: Imitation Coral Reconstruction in Cross-Cultural Contexts
Author: Donna Bilak
Abstract: This essay discusses imitation coral reconstruction workshops based on a recipe from a sixteenth‐century “book of secrets” that took place in three different educational contexts: Columbia University, Nunavut Arctic College, and Universität Hamburg. It reflects on the utility of reconstruction and material literacy as present‐day history of science methodologies in which scholarly textual interpretation meets physical research. It also considers the nature of cultural heritage in shaping material practice through an Inuit cultural context, in which the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge is not rooted in textual traditions, but bodily embedded in oral histories, craft technology, and land stewardship. The essay also presents suggestions for new collaborative practices between humanists, artisans, and scientists that can be facilitated by reconstruction methodology.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/bewi.202000010
Primary URL Description: Special Issue, “Rethinking Performative Methods in the History of Science.” Guest Editor, Marieke M. A. Hendriksen. Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Vol. 43 (2020)
Access Model: paid
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte
Publisher: Beitrag

The Renaissance of the Mask: from plague doctor beaks to velvet visards (Blog Post)
Title: The Renaissance of the Mask: from plague doctor beaks to velvet visards
Author: Sophie Pitman
Abstract: 2020 is unlikely to be recorded in the history books as a particularly fashionable year, as many of us have turned to neck-up ‘zoom-ready’ looks, elasticated waistbands, and slippers for comfort. But it has been sartorially remarkable for the almost-overnight success of one formerly niche accessory: the mask. As countries mandate their use in public spaces to combat the spread of Covid-19, many of us have started to wear masks for the first time, and they have become an essential part of one’s outfit. Choice of materials and maker has become important as consumers are chastised for their mask selection. Designers have capitalised on the opportunity to brand and monetise the public health crisis, while those of us with sewing skills have started cottage industry production lines to provide them for friends and family. Single use non-biodegradable masks are filling landfills by the billion, and the medical industry is asking us to reserve the highest quality of N-95 masks for healthcare professionals. Cloth masks with bright prints, beaded ties and even ruffled edges have become big business, and, you can turn to Vogue to discover the most stylish (and expensive) options on the market. Wearing – or not wearing – a mask is a political, medical, and ethical act, but it can also be a fashion statement. Masks might be ‘new’ accessories in the wardrobes of this generation, but they have a long history.
Date: 12/02/2020
Primary URL: https://refashioningrenaissance.eu/the-renaissance-of-the-mask/
Primary URL Description: Blog post
Blog Title: Refashioning the Renaissance Blog
Website: Refashioning the Renaissance Blog

Crafting Digital Histories of Science: A Review and Tour of Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France (Article)
Title: Crafting Digital Histories of Science: A Review and Tour of Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France
Author: Lan A. Li
Abstract: Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France is the long-awaited output of the Making and Knowing Project.1 Organized by the historian of science Pamela H. Smith, this work presents an exceptionally close reading of the sixteenth-century manuscript Ms. Fr. 640, an anonymous early modern source composed of handwritten entries that pertain to the history of science, art history, and material culture. The original manuscript itself contains over nine hundred individual entries on life casting, medical therapeutics, painting, printing, optics, dye-ing, metal working, counterfeiting, molding, and more.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/715712
Format: Journal
Publisher: Isis

Reconstructing Early Modern Artisanal Epistemologies and an “Undisciplined” Mode of Inquiry (Article)
Title: Reconstructing Early Modern Artisanal Epistemologies and an “Undisciplined” Mode of Inquiry
Author: Tianna Helena Uchacz
Abstract: This essay presents an overview of the Making and Knowing Project and its approach to teaching hands-on history of craft and science through the lens of an early modern manuscript compilation of artisanal recipes. It calls attention to the advantages and challenges of cultivating student skills through an intensive program of problem-based pedagogy, highlights the transformative potential of experiential learning, and introduces the Project’s next initiative: a “Research and Teaching Companion” to help users integrate exploratory, question-generating experiments into the classroom and project design.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/711100
Format: Journal
Publisher: Isis

Visualizing Semantic Markup in BnF Ms. Fr. 640 (Blog Post)
Title: Visualizing Semantic Markup in BnF Ms. Fr. 640
Author: Clément Godbarge
Abstract: Data-rich scholarly editions contain valuable editorial annotations one can extract, analyze, and visualize for all sorts of scholarly purposes. This is the case of Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France, released in 2020, and which makes its metadata file available to download from its GitHub repository. In this post, I show how to gather all these variables in a correlation matrix and visualize them in different ways.
Date: 12/12/2021
Primary URL: https://www.clementgodbarge.com/post/visualization/
Blog Title: Visualizing Semantic Markup in BnF Ms. Fr. 640
Website: clementgodbarge.com

The Making and Knowing Project Sandbox (Web Resource)
Title: The Making and Knowing Project Sandbox
Author: Pamela H. Smith
Abstract: The “Sandbox” makes available a number of resources that utilize and explore the data underlying Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France. A Digital Critical Edition and English Translation of BnF Ms. Fr. 640 created by the Making and Knowing Project at Columbia University. The Sandbox presents experimental, provisional, and in-progress work that expands upon the engagement and analyses with the data, topics, and content of Secrets of Craft and Nature, with the manuscript, BnF Ms. Fr. 640, and the larger themes explored by the Making and Knowing Project. The Making and Knowing Project hopes to create an online environment for students, scholars, and others to explore and experiment with the Project’s data using a variety of digital tools, where others can add and create their own tools, case studies, and resources presented here. This is also a space for sharing teaching resources, exploring methods and processes across disciplines and levels of expertise, and engaging in knowledge exchange wherever possible.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://cu-mkp.github.io/sandbox/

From Lived Experience to the Written Word Reconstructing Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern World (Book)
Title: From Lived Experience to the Written Word Reconstructing Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern World
Author: Pamela H. Smith
Abstract: In From Lived Experience to the Written Word, Pamela H. Smith considers how and why, beginning in 1400 CE, European craftspeople began to write down their making practices. Rather than simply passing along knowledge in the workshop, these literate artisans chose to publish handbooks, guides, treatises, tip sheets, graphs, and recipe books, sparking early technical writing and laying the groundwork for how we think about scientific knowledge today.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo133038690.html
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Type: Single author monograph

Thinking through Molds: Metal Flow and Visualizing the Unseen (Article)
Title: Thinking through Molds: Metal Flow and Visualizing the Unseen
Author: Pamela H. Smith
Author: Andrew Lacey
Abstract: Until techniques like those described in this article were available, clues to how molten metal behaved inside a mold had to be sensed from phenomena occurring outside the mold, including how fast the mold filled, metal splashes, and cracking. But sixteenth-century sources show that the flow of metal through the mold was visualized in advance during the construction of the mold itself. This article focuses on evidence from an anonymous sixteenth-century source that demonstrates such thinking through molds about the unseen.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/721207
Format: Journal
Publisher: West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture

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