2020 Essays

What is Or Mat in Ms. Fr. 640?

Ndungu, Njeri

The term or mat occurs several times in Ms. Fr. 640, often alongside mentions of gold, gilding, and gold color. This essay reconstructs a recipe on fol. 66r, “Gilding molding for panels with or mat,” to flesh out the semantic richness of or mat in relation to the manuscript, contemporary artisanal and archival sources, modern conservation literature, museum objects, and the strange etymological development of the term. Ultimately, this essay argues that or mat should be considered neither as a material nor as a technique exclusively. Rather, early modern conceptual understandings of the term seem to point to the inextricability of the optical effects of the material from the processes of its making.