Working Groups

From 2015-2019, the Making and Knowing Project held an annual Working Group Meeting. Each meeting corresponds to the yearly theme — Moldmaking and Metalworking; Color Making; Practical Knowledge: Vernacular Natural History, Practical Perspective, Optics, Mechanics, and Medicine; Ephemeral Art; and Printmaking, Inscriptions, Impressions. Each Working Group focuses on different sections of Ms. Fr. 640, and include scholars and expert makers whose expertise is directly related to the content of those sections of the manuscript.

Correctly interpreting and translating the manuscript depends on understanding its materials, techniques, and processes, so the participation of the Working Groups’ Expert Makers and scholars ensures that contents of the final digital edition meet the highest standards of accuracy and scholarship.

Working Group members participate (as possible) in the paleography workshops and the laboratory seminars at Columbia through guest lectures and studio visits, and convene annually to review annotations.

The first annual Working Group Meetings was held May 27-30, 2015, during which Moldmaking and Metalworking Working Group members provided expertise and critical oversight to the annotation process and the final digital edition.

The second Working Group Meeting — on Colormaking — was held May 26-28, 2016.

The third Working Group Meeting — on Practical Knowledge: Vernacular Natural History, Practical Perspective, Optics, Mechanics, and Medicine — was held May 23-25, 2017.

The fourth Working Group Meeting — on Ephemeral Art — was held May 22-24, 2018.

The fifth Working Group Meeting — on Printmaking, Inscriptions, Impressions — was held May 14-16, 2019

Explore the student and scholar research essays via digital critical edition, openly accessible at http://edition640.makingandknowing.org.

Working Group Participants