ARTH 295 - Ingenious Making in the Early Modern World

FC ARHU CD

4 credits
This course will explore what it meant to make things and work with materials, including featherwork, imitation gems, color making, and metal casting, in Europe and colonial Latin America between c. 1350-1650. We will follow historical descriptions and recipes to reconstruct methods of making and learn from expert practitioners, including indigenous makers. We will consider how a wide range of practitioners developed hands-on knowledge in workshops, laboratories, marketplaces, gardens, etc., and we will explore how making was and is a form of knowledge, how there are different systems of knowledge, and the intersections between art making and science. Field trip(s) required. Recommended Preparation: one 100-level course in art history.

This course is appropriate for new students.