Tianna Uchacz (Texas A&M University)
"Reading Between the Lines: Ornament Prints and the Tacit Know-How of Material Translation"
In the sixteenth century, leading European artists and enterprising printmakers began to issue engraved series of designs for grotesque ornament. Marketed broadly to “lovers of art,” these prints showcased inventive elaborations of strapwork, garlands, floral motifs, hybrid animals, and masks. In many cases, the print series included a title page touting the utility of the designs for artisans ranging from painters and embroiderers to sculptors and goldsmiths. The material affordances of paint, thread, wood, stone, and metal, however, are distinct, as were the tools, techniques, and design traditions necessary to work with them. This paper considers what can be gained by seeing ornament print title pages as technical texts or "recipes" of sorts. The reconstruction of historical making techniques can help historians understand period claims for the utility of ornament prints, parsing the rhetoric from the material reality of translating design across media in early modern Europe.
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