The Body of the Artisan

The Body of the Artisan
Author: Pamela H. Smith
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2018-01-16
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0226764265

Since the time of Aristotle, the making of knowledge and the making of objects have generally been considered separate enterprises. Yet during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the two became linked through a "new" philosophy known as science. In The Body of the Artisan, Pamela H. Smith demonstrates how much early modern science owed to an unlikely source-artists and artisans. From goldsmiths to locksmiths and from carpenters to painters, artists and artisans were much sought after by the new scientists for their intimate, hands-on knowledge of natural materials and the ability to manipulate them. Drawing on a fascinating array of new evidence from northern Europe including artisans' objects and their writings, Smith shows how artisans saw all knowledge as rooted in matter and nature. With nearly two hundred images, The Body of the Artisan provides astonishingly vivid examples of this Renaissance synergy among art, craft, and science, and recovers a forgotten episode of the Scientific Revolution-an episode that forever altered the way we see the natural world.

The Body Impolitic

The Body Impolitic
Author: Michael Herzfeld
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2004
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0226329143

The Body Impolitic is a critical study of tradition, not merely as an ornament of local and national heritage, but also as a millstone around the necks of those who are condemned to produce it. Michael Herzfeld takes us inside a rich variety of small-town Cretan artisans' workshops to show how apprentices are systematically thwarted into learning by stealth and guile. This harsh training reinforces a stereotype of artisans as rude and uncultured. Moreover, the same stereotypes that marginalize artisans locally also operate to marginalize Cretans within the Greek nation and Greece itself within the international community. What Herzfeld identifies as "the global hierarchy of value" thus frames the nation's ancient monuments and traditional handicrafts as evidence of incurable "backwardness." Herzfeld's sensitive observations offer an intimately grounded way of understanding the effects of globalization and of one of its most visible offshoots, the heritage industry, on the lives of ordinary people in many parts of the world today.

From Lived Experience to the Written Word

From Lived Experience to the Written Word
Author: Pamela H. Smith
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2022-09-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 0226818241

"This book focuses on how literate artisans began to write about their discoveries starting around 1400: in other words, it explores the origins of technical writing. Artisans and artists began to publish handbooks, guides, treatises, tip sheets, graphs and recipe books rather than simply pass along their knowledge in the workshop. And they tried to articulate what the new knowledge meant. The popularity of these texts coincided with the founding of a "new philosophy" that sought to investigate nature in a new way. Smith shows how this moment began in the unceasing trials of the craft workshop, and ended in the experimentation of the natural scientific laboratory. These epistemological developments have continued to the present day and still inform how we think about scientific knowledge"--

The Artisan Herbalist

The Artisan Herbalist
Author: Bevin Cohen
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Total Pages: 199
Release: 2021-04-06
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 1771423471

Start your journey as an artisan herbalist and take back control of your health and well-being the natural way with this accessible guide. From urban apartments to wild countryside, The Artisan Herbalist is an easy-to-use guide that teaches you how to identify, grow, harvest, forage, and craft herbal allies into an assortment of useful health and wellness products. Through storytelling and step-by-step instruction, The Artisan Herbalist covers: The uses and benefits of thirty-eight easy-to-find yet powerful herbs Harvesting from the wild, foraging in the city, and using store-bought herbs Growing herbs in small areas, balconies, and pots Principles, tips, techniques, and formulas to create teas and tinctures Infusing oils for the creation of salves, lotions, and balms Beneficial herb-based recipes Marketing and selling your products through a home-based business Whether you live in the city, suburbs, or countryside, take back control of your health and begin your journey toward independent self-care as a budding artisan herbalist. Praise for The Artisan Herbalist Winner, 2022 International Book Award, Health: Alternative Medicine “A thoroughly delightful, practical, and well-organized introduction to the uses of plants as medicine and food.” —Rosemary Gladstar herbalist and author, Rosemary Gladstar’s Medicinal Herbs “A masterpiece! Not only is this book beautiful, but it is highly useful. . . . This is the book every beginner herbalist should have on hand to start on their herbal path.” —Kristine Brown RH (AHG), author, Herbal Roots zine, Herbalism at Home, The Homesteader’s Guide to Growing Herbs, and Nature Anatomy Activities for Kids

The Tomb of the Artisan God

The Tomb of the Artisan God
Author: Serge Margel
Publisher:
Total Pages: 146
Release: 2019
Genre: Cosmology, Ancient
ISBN: 9781517906412

The Tomb of the Artisan God provides a radical rereading of Timaeus, Plato’s metaphysical text on time, eternity, and the relationship between soul and body. First published in French in 1995, the original edition of Serge Margel’s book included an extensive introductory essay by Jacques Derrida, who drew on Margel’s insights in developing his own concepts of time, the promise, the world, and khōra. Now available in English with a new preface by Margel, this engagement with Platonic thought proceeds from two questions that span the history of philosophy: What is time? What is the body?

The Artisan's Book of Fetishcraft

The Artisan's Book of Fetishcraft
Author: John Huxley
Publisher: SCB Distributors
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2013-11-06
Genre: Crafts & Hobbies
ISBN: 0937609668

This beautiful and useful book teaches the reader to design and construct customized fetishwear, restraints, sensory deprivation devices, toys and whips, professionally elegant and crafted to the maker's individual needs and desires. Each project includes a detailed pattern with complete instructions for tailoring it to fit the wearer's or user's physiology and fantasies. Featuring such never-before-shown luxury items as full-body zentai, custom lace-up hoods, fully professional and properly weighted floggers and singletails, and various body harnesses for all genders, The Artisan's Guide will pay for itself hundreds of times over in the hands of a creative craftsperson.

The Artisan of Ipswich

The Artisan of Ipswich
Author: Robert Tarule
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2007-10-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1421405857

Thomas Dennis emigrated to America from England in 1663, settling in Ipswich, a Massachusetts village a long day's sail north of Boston. He had apprenticed in joinery, the most common method of making furniture in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Britain, and he became Ipswich's second joiner, setting up shop in the heart of the village. During his lifetime, Dennis won wide renown as an artisan. Today, connoisseurs judge his elaborately carved furniture as among the best produced in seventeenth-century America. Robert Tarule, historian and accomplished craftsman, brilliantly recreates Dennis's world in recounting how he created a single oak chest. Writing as a woodworker himself, Tarule vividly portrays Dennis walking through the woods looking for the right trees; sawing and splitting the wood on site; and working in his shop on the chest—planing, joining, and carving. Dennis inherited a knowledge of wood and woodworking that dated back centuries before he was born, and Tarule traces this tradition from Old World to New. He also depicts the natural and social landscape in which Dennis operated, from the sights, sounds, and smells of colonial Ipswich and its surrounding countryside to the laws that governed his use of trees and his network of personal and professional relationships. Thomas Dennis embodies a world that had begun to disappear even during his lifetime, one that today may seem unimaginably distant. Imaginatively conceived and elegantly executed, The Artisan of Ipswich gives readers a tangible understanding of that distant past.

Bound by Creativity

Bound by Creativity
Author: Hannah Wohl
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2021-06-22
Genre: Art
ISBN: 022678472X

What is creativity? While our traditional view of creative work might lead us to think of artists as solitary visionaries, the creative process is profoundly influenced by social interactions even when artists work alone. Sociologist Hannah Wohl draws on more than one hundred interviews and two years of ethnographic research in the New York contemporary art market to develop a rich sociological perspective of creativity. From inside the studio, we see how artists experiment with new ideas and decide which works to abandon, destroy, put into storage, or exhibit. Wohl then transports readers into the art world, where we discover how artists’ understandings of their work are shaped through interactions in studio visits, galleries, international art fairs, and collectors’ homes. Bound by Creativity reveals how artists develop conceptions of their distinctive creative visions through experimentation and social interactions. Ultimately, we come to appreciate how judgment is integral to the creative process, both resulting in the creation of original works while also limiting an artist’s ability to break new ground. Exploring creativity through the lens of judgment sheds new light on the production of cultural objects, markets, and prestige.

Artisanal Enlightenment

Artisanal Enlightenment
Author: Paola Bertucci
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2017-11-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300231628

A groundbreaking work that places the mechanical arts and the world of making at the heart of the Enlightenment What would the Enlightenment look like from the perspective of artistes, the learned artisans with esprit, who presented themselves in contrast to philosophers, savants, and routine-bound craftsmen? Making a radical change of historical protagonists, Paola Bertucci places the mechanical arts and the world of making at the heart of the Enlightenment. At a time of great colonial, commercial, and imperial concerns, artistes planned encyclopedic projects and sought an official role in the administration of the French state. The Société des Arts, which they envisioned as a state institution that would foster France’s colonial and economic expansion, was the most ambitious expression of their collective aspirations. Artisanal Enlightenment provides the first in-depth study of the Société, and demonstrates its legacy in scientific programs, academies, and the making of Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopédie. Through insightful analysis of textual, visual, and material sources, Bertucci provides a groundbreaking perspective on the politics of writing on the mechanical arts and the development of key Enlightenment concepts such as improvement, utility, and progress.

Craft

Craft
Author: Glenn Adamson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2021-01-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1635574595

New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice A groundbreaking and endlessly surprising history of how artisans created America, from the nation's origins to the present day. At the center of the United States' economic and social development, according to conventional wisdom, are industry and technology-while craftspeople and handmade objects are relegated to a bygone past. Renowned historian Glenn Adamson turns that narrative on its head in this innovative account, revealing makers' central role in shaping America's identity. Examine any phase of the nation's struggle to define itself, and artisans are there-from the silversmith Paul Revere and the revolutionary carpenters and blacksmiths who hurled tea into Boston Harbor, to today's “maker movement.” From Mother Jones to Rosie the Riveter. From Betsy Ross to Rosa Parks. From suffrage banners to the AIDS Quilt. Adamson shows that craft has long been implicated in debates around equality, education, and class. Artisanship has often been a site of resistance for oppressed people, such as enslaved African-Americans whose skilled labor might confer hard-won agency under bondage, or the Native American makers who adapted traditional arts into statements of modernity. Theirs are among the array of memorable portraits of Americans both celebrated and unfamiliar in this richly peopled book. As Adamson argues, these artisans' stories speak to our collective striving toward a more perfect union. From the beginning, America had to be-and still remains to be-crafted.