Crafting enlightenment: artisanal histories and transnational networks

Uittreksel

"Examining the transnational conditions of the European Enlightenment, Crafting Enlightenment argues that artisans of the long eighteenth-century on four different continents created and disseminated ideas that revolutionized how we understand modern-day craftsmanship, design, labor, and technology. Starting in Europe, this book journeys through France across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas and then on to Asia and Oceania. Highlighting diverse identities of artisans, the authors trace how these historical actors formed networks at local and global levels to assert their own forms of expertise and experience. These artisans - some anonymous, eminent, and outside the margins - translated European Enlightenment thinking into a number of disciplines and trades including architecture, botany, ceramics, construction, furniture, gardening, horology, interior design, manuscript illustration, and mining. In each thematic section of this illustrated volume, two leading scholars present contrasting case studies of artisans in different geographic contexts. These paired chapters are also followed by shorter commentary that reflects on pertinent themes from both chapters. Emphasizing how and why artisanal histories around the world impacted civic and private life, commerce, cultural engagement, and sense of place, this book introduces new richness and depth to the conversations around the ambivalent and fragmented nature of the Enlightenment." Provided by publisher.

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I. Envisioning artisanal histories -- Sovereign Sun King / Chandra Mukerji -- Visualizing urban festivals in the Ottoman Empire : a comparison of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries / Emine Fetvacı -- Telling artisanal time / Richard Taws -- II. Collaborative objects -- The secret to success : urbanization and luxury decoration at the place Louis-le-Grand / Frédéric Dassas -- The Spanish colonial world in microcosm : a Puebla desk-and-bookcase / Dennis Carr -- Artisanal agency, anonymity, and power / Florina H. Capistrano-Baker -- III. Religion and commerce of empire -- Mark of disgrace or matter of politeness? Materiality, trust, and expectation in early-eighteenth-century Virginia / Neil Kamil -- Interregna : the Société des arts and the scale of time / Lauren R. Cannady -- Confessional complications in maritime trade / Thomas Crow -- IV. Corporeal ecologies -- A "small" story of the jasmine flower in the age of global botany / Sugata Ray -- Fire walk with me : tales of artisanal body (parts) and innovation in early modern China / Dorothy Ko -- Grounded terrains and vertical landscapes in eighteenth-century Asia / Nancy Um -- V. Enlightenment technologies -- Craft knowledge in the age of encyclopedism / Valérie Nègre -- Miniature domination : mining the worlds of goldfields jewelry and emu eggs / Jennifer Ferng -- Artisans as thinkers in the early modern world / Kaijun Cheng -- Summaries. I. Envisioning artisanal histories -- II. Collaborative objects -- III. Religion and commerce of empire -- IV. Corporeal ecologies -- V. Enlightenment technologies.