sandbox
The “Sandbox” space 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.
Making and Knowing Pop-up Book
Luxi Yang and Jianing Wei
Spring 2022
HIST GU4962: Making and Knowing in Early Modern Europe: Hands-On History
A Visual Presentation of the Pop-up Book [PDF]
Behind the scenes
This final project for the course “Making and Knowing in Early Modern Europe: Hands-On History” at Columbia University was created by Luxi Yang and Jianing Wei.
This pop-up book contains both a selection of entries from Ms. Fr. 640 and a miniaturized Kunstkammer. Its four chapters “Tools and the Book,” “Life and Nature,” “Nature and Imagination,” and “Against Nature” emphasize the first-person and experimental nature of Ms. Fr.
- The book as a whole reveals how Naturalia (natural things), Artificialia (artifacts - human-made things), and Scientifica (measuring/mathematical objects) were brought together in Renaissance France to form intriguing collections.
Kunstkammer
Kunstkammer is German for “Chamber of Art.” Since the medieval period wealthy Europeans collected objects that combined natural materials and artistic virtuosity, as well as monstrous, unique, and exotic objects. The building of a Kunstkammer is more than a collecting activity: it functions as a symbol of social rank and is a manifestation of the thirst for practical knowledge.
Making and Knowing Project
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.
From 2014 through 2020, the Project’s focus was the creation of a digital critical edition of an intriguing anonymous sixteenth-century French artisanal and technical manuscript, BnF Ms. Fr. 640.
BnF Ms. Fr. 640
Ms. Fr. 640 is a unique manuscript composed in 1580s Toulouse, France. It offers first-hand insight into making and materials from a time when artists were scientists.
Differing from other recipe books or how-to manuals from the same time, BnF Ms. Fr. 640 reveals the writer’s own experiences, and contains extensive observations of animal behavior and sketched illustrations of technical points.
Pop-up Book and Collection of Miniatures: Table of Contents
Below is the table of contents for the pop-up book with links to the folios represented from the Edition of BnF Ms. Fr. 640. Because of the form of our final project, the way these contents are displayed will be different from the “step-by-step” instructions found in Fr. 640. Also, since our book is 3D and the Visual Presentation of the Pop-up Book [PDF] is “flat,” we spend more than one page in the Presentation showing the pages “before and after” they have “popped up” or been interacted with.
Chapter 1. Tools and the Book
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Before the book
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Kunstkammer