Centaurus

This special issue explores the materiality of science in the early modern period. The articles in this issue track the materials and objects of natural philosophical practice and question how they were made, copied, reused, and circulated during the process of creating scientific and artisanal knowledge. This issue further examines how both quotidian and rare materials, such as metal, glass, paper, or gemstones, often played a crucial role in these processes, as they were formed and transformed into objects of knowledge themselves. By considering the material meaning and contexts of these objects, this issue reveals the critical role that materials played in diverse forms of knowledge production and transfer in early modernity.

Early modern alchemy was a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, a colourful mosaic of activities that shared the need for specialised apparatus. The importance of choosing the right equipment is frequently stressed in documents and examples of such equipment abound in written and iconographic sources. Archaeological excavations at sites such as alchemical laboratories and artisanal workshops have unearthed assemblages of laboratory tools, which provide us with the opportunity to investigate early modern alchemical practice through the lens of its material culture. Through the chemical analysis of the distillation equipment discovered at the 16th-century alchemical laboratory in Oberstockstall (Austria), this paper explores the history of the glass vessels that once filled it, how they were made and where they were sourced from. The results reveal that laboratory practitioners chose high-quality glass for vials and distillation flasks, with cheaper glasses being selected for objects that did not require specific characteristics. The former group belongs to a well-known manufacturing tradition that copied the sought-after Venetian crystal in central and northern Europe. Alchemists wanted perfectly clear glass which would allow them to see inside the vessels during chemical operations and thus maintain a better control over the reactions. Using material culture as the starting point, this paper investigates issues relating to the copying, mixing, and recycling employed to make glass more desirable for tools used in laboratory activities all over Europe.

This study situates 16th-century ornament prints within the contexts of print culture, entrepreneurial publishing, textual and visual rhetorics, and the practical knowledge encoded in technical texts. It suggests that it is worth taking seriously the explicit claims on the title pages to ornament-print series that the designs are “useful” for particular categories of artists. Comparisons with theaters of machines show that ornament prints participated in a broader instructional genre that aimed to convey as much about design and making strategies as it did about objects and artworks. The reconstruction of historical making processes by which ornament designs could have been translated into their destination media offers promise for understanding how, exactly, ornament prints might have been useful, particularly as “recipes” for early modern art. Considering ornament prints as analogs of technical literature and how-to texts offers art historians a much-needed materialist perspective to augment their formalist and iconographic approaches, while it offers historians of science a new corpus of non-verbal technical sources to better understand early modern design thinking and making processes. The understanding of what counts as a “how-to” text can be refined or reformulated to make space for a genre of art—ornament prints—that has hitherto been valued predominantly for its imaginative, fantasy forms rather than its utility for artisanal practice.

This article delves into the fascinating journey of early modern emeralds, tracing back their mystified provenance to the tropical Andes in the New Kingdom of Granada during the 16th and 17th centuries, and analyzing the reaction and attitudes towards such provenance in their global trade. It sheds light on the transformation, meanings, and itineraries of New World emerald matter across different regimes of value and transaction—from their oriental reception in Moghul and Safavid territories, to the Spanish Habsburgs' European and Atlantic network of mineral taste, to the Spanish quest to control the emerald mines among the Muisca and Muzo Amerindian people. Through an analysis of historical records and emerald objects extracted and fabricated within a colonial context, this article uncovers the epistemic contents and the cultural entanglements of the green stones.

In the collection of the John Rylands Library in Manchester, Shelfmark 2028.1 refers to a printed book titled the Cosmographia. This astronomical textbook was an edition published in 1550 by Peter Apian and edited by Gemma Frisius. When initially produced, the book included several preassembled printed volvelles (circular rotating paper instruments which were commonly used for instruction or calculation). However, when studying this item, a surprise awaits. Handmade manuscript volvelles have been created and inserted in place of the original printed volvelles. This item is unique and displays evidence of how the user engaged with and was affected by the interactive elements. This paper explores the provenance of the book through the marks and marginalia left by its previous owners, the handcrafted volvelles, and the additional creation of a “Moon Diall” on added endpapers. Using volvelles allowed knowledge to be shared through the senses, through seeing (visual thinking) and doing (material engagement). This paper asserts that volvelles enabled astronomical knowledge to become more widely accessible to different audiences.

In the 1750s the Russian academician and chemist Mikhail Vasil'evich Lomonosov experimented with making coloured glass in his laboratory at the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. Lomonosov went on to open a manufactory nearby at Ust-Ruditsa, where he produced coloured glass mosaics. This enterprise has been represented variously as the work of a lone genius, as a failed business enterprise, and more recently as a form of projecting. The present essay places Lomonosov's glass work in a courtly context, as in part a continuation of the Academy's role of celebrating the Russian sovereign through spectacles such as fireworks and illuminations. Lomonosov sought to shape and contribute to a ‘ruling image” for the empress Elizabeth Petrovna, turning to mosaics owing to their capacity to interweave Russian tradition, Orthodox religion, and enlightened chemistry. Glass was a business, to be sure, but also a courtly, political, and religious material in Lomonosov's experiments.

We generally assume that the encounter with the Americas contributed to the downfall of trust in the ancient authorities. Not only did the ancients have no specific knowledge of the existence of the so-called “New World,” but the knowledge they did possess proved, in some cases, to be contradictory to the new discoveries. One of the main fields in which experience of the New World was used to criticise ancient knowledge was meteorology, and in particular the fact that the torrid zone was not extremely hot and dry as the ancients had claimed, but of a pleasant climate with abundant vegetation. This paper investigates how Juan de Cárdenas (1563–1609) made use of his experience in the New World to support the truth of Aristotle's theories in the field of meteorology. More precisely, Cárdenas employed the hypothesis of subterranean caves to account for the humidity and pleasant climate of the West Indies in the tropics. In this way, he claimed that this new land was exceptional, while he sought to preserve Aristotle's theory that the torrid zone, in normal conditions, is indeed dry and hot. Cárdenas aimed to prove that the peculiarities of the New World can only be explained by his hypothesis, and he used a comparison between Spanish and American vegetation to show why the former is the result of a perfect nature, while the latter is inferior due to its location on top of these caves, which do not allow nature to follow its own course, which in this case would be complete dryness and lack of vegetation.

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