What are historians doing in the laboratory? Looking back over six years of collaborative work, researchers of the Making and Knowing Project at Columbia University discuss their experience with hands‐on reconstruction as a historical method. This work engages practical forms of knowledge—from pigment‐making to metal casting—recorded in the BnF Ms. Fr. 640, an anonymous French manuscript compiled in the later sixteenth century. Bodily encounters with materials and processes of the past offer insights into the material and mental worlds of early modern artists and artisans, and train the eye in the interpretation of historical objects. At the same time, reconstruction contributes to the interpretation of the text: it is only by attempting to implement the instructions of practical or recipe literature that these texts can be understood as vehicles of emergent knowledge that only fully manifests itself in the doing. Overall, our approach to reconstruction mirrors that of the anonymous author‐practitioner, who explored a wide range of techniques through experimenting and writing.

中文翻译：

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眼睛和手的教育：制作和知识项目中研究和教学法的表演方法

历史学家在实验室里做什么？回顾六年多来的合作工作，哥伦比亚大学的制作和知识项目的研究人员讨论了他们将动手重建作为一种历史方法的经验。这项工作涉及实用的知识形式——从颜料制造到金属铸造——记录在 BnF Ms. Fr 中。640，一份匿名的法国手稿，编于 16 世纪后期。与过去的材料和过程的身体接触提供了对早期现代艺术家和工匠的物质和精神世界的洞察，并训练了对历史物品的解释的眼睛。同时，重构有助于文本的解读：只有通过尝试执行实践或食谱文献的说明，这些文本才能被理解为涌现知识的载体，只有在做的时候才能完全体现自己。总的来说，我们的重建方法反映了匿名作者 - 从业者的方法，他们通过实验和写作探索了广泛的技术。