From Lived Experience to the Written Word: Reconstructing Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern World

How and why early modern European artisans began to record their knowledge.

In From Lived Experience to the Written Word, Pamela H. Smith considers how and why, beginning in 1400 CE, European craftspeople began to write down their making practices. Rather than simply passing along knowledge in the workshop, these literate artisans chose to publish handbooks, guides, treatises, tip sheets, graphs, and recipe books, sparking early technical writing and laying the groundwork for how we think about scientific knowledge today.

Focusing on metalworking from 1400-1800 CE, Smith looks at the nature of craft knowledge and skill, studying present-day and historical practices, objects, recipes, and artisanal manuals. From these sources, she considers how we can reconstruct centuries of largely lost knowledge. In doing so, she aims not only to unearth the techniques, material processes, and embodied experience of the past but also to gain insight into the lifeworld of artisans and their understandings of matter.by Pamela H. Smith (2022) is published by the University of Chicago Press and is available through the publisher and online retailers.

From Lived Experience draws from the project’s research, revealing that these manuscripts and recipe books that instruct about working with materials are nothing short of intimate insights into the inventive zones of early modern craftspersons and artisans.

Building from her research and years of hands-on experiences, science historian Pamela H. Smith’s latest title confirms intersections between materials, craft, technique, and developing scientific expertise in early modern European workshops.