By Thijs Hagendijk In early March 2017, a few members of the ARTECHNE team, myself included, went to Mechelen (Belgium) for a meeting. To make the most of it, I proposed to first inspect a special eighteenth-century edition of Willem van Laer’s Weg-wyzer voor aankoomende zilversmeeden that had been published in Mechelen. I was eager…

By Marieke Hendriksen A travel grant from the Wood Institute at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia recently allowed me to do research in their library and archives. Established in 1786, the College holds a wonderful collection of manuscripts and printed works. As I am particularly interested in the transmission of art technical knowledge in…

By Sven Dupré One of the ARTECHNE project’s home bases is the department of art history (and history) at Utrecht University. We are fortunate that in Utrecht the study of technique in the arts has a tradition reaching back one century. This is local university history, sure, but local history strongly connected to international developments…

* This blog was cross-posted on 10 October 2017 on Shells and Pebbles* By Jenny Boulboullé On 6 December 2016 Katrien Vanagt, a historian of science and filmmaker, gave a guest lecture on early modern experiments in anatomy and optics within Prof. Sven Dupré’s Master course “Art and knowledge: Light, Color and Perspective in Art”…

* This text is part of an essay originally written in 2014 and submitted for the MSc in Conservation Science (University College London)* By Mariana Pinto In our Artechne project we investigate technique in the Arts. My research is focused on pigments; more specifically, I study how chemical analyses of pigments influenced conservation practice during…