Publications & Press – Making and Knowing Project

For journalists and members of the media interested in writing about the Making and Knowing Project and Secrets of Craft and Nature or interviewing Project members, please email Caroline Surman at cms2274@columbia.edu.

Making and Knowing Project Scholarly Resources

Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France. A Digital Critical Edition and English Translation of BnF Ms. Fr. 640.
- Please consult our general and scholarly press releases for additional information.
The Research and Teaching Companion to Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France.
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The Secrets of Craft and Nature Sandbox presents experimental, provisional, and in-progress work that expands upon the engagement and analyses with the data, topics, and content of Secrets of Craft and Nature and with the manuscript, BnF Ms. Fr. 640.

Scholarly Publications

Sarah Muñoz, “Uses and techniques of stucco in France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Considerations, know-how and workshop secrets,” Bulletin du Centre de recherche du château de Versailles, volume 27 (2025)
Tillmann Taape, Crafting Medicine: Artisans, Knowledge, and the Common Man in Hieronymus Brunschwig’s Books on Surgery and Distillation, (University of Chicago Press, 2025)
Sarah Muñoz, “Definitions, techniques and uses of plaster in France and the Toulouse region in the 16th century,” Patrimoines du Sud, volume 19 (2024)
Tianna Helena Uchacz, “Reading Between the Lines: Ornament Prints as Technical Literature,” Centaurus, volume 66, issue 4 (2024), pp. 539-578
Pamela Smith, From Lived Experience to the Written Word, (University of Chicago Press, 2022)
Andrew Lacey and Pamela H. Smith, “Thinking through Molds: Metal Flow and Visualizing the Unseen,” West 86th, volume 28, issue 2 (2022), pp. 259-268
Lan A. Li, “Crafting Digital Histories of Science: A Review and Tour of Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France,” Isis, volume 112, issue 3 (2020): 586-589
Tianna Helena Uchacz, “Reconstructing Early Modern Artisanal Epistemologies and an “Undisciplined” Mode of Inquiry,” Isis, volume 111, issue 3 (2020): 606-613
Pamela H. Smith and Isabella Lores-Chavez, “Counterfeiting Materials, Imitating Nature,” in Marjolijn Bol and Emma Spary, eds., The Matter of Mimesis (Leiden: Brill, 2023)
Tillmann Taape, Pamela Smith, Tianna Uchacz, “Schooling the Eye and Hand: Performative Methods of Research and Pedagogy in the Making and Knowing Project,” Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, volume 43, Issue 3 (2020)
Donna Bilak, “Out of the Ivy and into the Arctic: Imitation Coral Reconstruction in Cross-Cultural Contexts,” Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, volume 43, issue 3 (2020)
Pamela Smith, Tianna Uchacz, Sophie Pitman, Tillmann Taape, and Colin Debuiche, “The Matter of Ephemeral Art: Craft, Spectacle, and Power in Early Modern Europe,” Renaissance Quarterly, volume 73, issue 1 (2020), 78-131
Jenny Boulboullé and Sven Dupré (eds.), Burgundian Black: Reworking Early Modern Colour Technologies. Open access E-book publication, EMC Imprint.
Pamela H. Smith, Tianna Helena Uchacz, Naomi Rosenkranz, and Claire Conklin Sabel, “The Making of Empirical Knowledge: Recipes, Craft, and Scholarly Communication,” in Reassembling Scholarly Communications: Histories, Infrastructures, and Global Politics of Open Access, ed. Martin Paul Eve and Jonathan Gray (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2020), pp. 125-144, https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11885.003.0014
Pamela H. Smith, Joslyn DeVinney, Sasha Grafit, and Xiaomeng Liu, “Smoke and Silk: The Movement of Material Complexes across Eurasia,” in Pamela H. Smith, ed., Entangled Itineraries of Materials, Practices, and Knowledges Across Eurasia (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019), 165-181
Kathryn Kremnitzer, Siddhartha V. Shah, Wenrui Zhao; Three Recipes for Historical Reconstruction. Common Knowledge 1 August 2018; 24 (3): 389–396
Pamela H. Smith, “Des recettes et des secrets à l’expérience: le “Making and Knowing Project” Toulouse Renaissance, Musée des Augustins, Toulouse (Paris: Somogy éditions d’art, 2018): 340-43
Pamela H. Smith, Amy R. W. Meyers, Harold J. Cook, Ways of Making and Knowing: The Material Culture of Empirical Knowledge, Paperback Edition (University of Chicago Press, 2017)
Pamela H. Smith, “The Making and Knowing Project,” Exhibition Catalog, L’Accademia all’académie: il disegno dal vero come pratica storica e sapere contemporaneo (Rome, 2017)
Pamela H. Smith and The Making and Knowing Project, “Historians in the Laboratory: Reconstruction of Renaissance Art and Technology in the Making and Knowing Project,” Art History, volume 39, issue 2, pp. 210–233
Pamela H. Smith, “New Directions in Making and Knowing,” West 86th, volume 21, issue. 1 (2016), pp. 3-5
Donna Bilak, Jenny Boulboullé, Joel A. Klein, Pamela H. Smith, “The Making and Knowing Project: Reflections, Methods, and New Directions,” West 86th, volume 21, issue 1 (2016), pp. 35-55