2020 Essays

Court Workshops and Statecraft as Sites for Artisanal Knowledge Production and Exchange

Hermens, Erma

In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, various European courts established artisanal workshop clusters which contained a wide range of professions for producing objects ranging from the temporary and ephemeral to the durable and valuable, from modest household items to serve the court to highly sophisticated artifacts that demonstrated skilled craftsmanship, technical innovation, and material preciousness. These workshops were sites for the exchange of techniques, skills, and knowledge, as well as, frequently, for creating a “brand” identity for the ruler or court. Understanding the political and economic aspects of the multifaceted contexts, in which artifacts were produced for the court’s collections, galleries, and palaces as well as for political exchange of gifts, can inform us about the motivation of the author-practitioner of Ms. Fr. 640 in writing and compiling his text.