Cigarettes, Saliva, Art: Laboratory Expertise in Florence, Italy

Abstract

This Statement of Practice follows two kinds of restoration practice—an artisanal approach and a scientific one—to meditate upon the authority claimed over precious historical and aesthetic objects. Reporting on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Florence, Italy, I analyze my observations of a monk repairing an eighteenth-century book and a chemist developing nanotechnology to restore a painting by Jackson Pollock. Rather than set up these two practices in contrast to each other, I focus on seemingly trivial material traces—the monk’s cigarette and the chemist’s saliva—as embodiments of these practitioners’ confidence and discernment. Both the artisan and the scientist perform expertise by relying on sensory, craft-based familiarity with materials.