Experimenting in the Material World and on Paper in sixteenth-century France

Abstract

Hands-on experimentation did not begin in the natural scientific laboratory of the nineteenth century; it is instead a characteristic part of craft processes wherever and whenever they have been carried out – whether the bronze hearths of the pre-historic Near East, the furniture ateliers of the Ancien Régime, or in the kilns of the Saintonge, where Bernard Palissy labored so hard to imitate porcelain. A contemporary manuscript, BnF Ms. Fr. 640, gives remarkable insight into this constant experimentation of the artisan in the workshop. It also highlights the experimentation on paper that Palissy and other craftspeople engaged in during the sixteenth century.