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The hand of the connoisseur : gems and hardness in Enlightenment mineralogy
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Bycroft, Michael (2022) The hand of the connoisseur : gems and hardness in Enlightenment mineralogy. History of Science, 60 (4). pp. 500-523. doi:10.1177/00732753221087558 ISSN 1753-8564.
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/00732753221087558
Abstract
Historians of natural history have shown that the study of plants, animals, and minerals was a form of connoisseurship in the eighteenth century. Historians of early modern experiments have linked scientific knowledge to the manual skills of artisans. I combine these two insights, arguing that connoisseurship in the sciences meant learning to touch, not just learning to look. The focus is on gems and mineralogy in eighteenth-century France. I show, firstly, that the study of gems was linked to the connoisseurship (“connoissance”) of paintings. Next, books on gems were closely related to the new mineralogical treatises that emerged in the middle of the eighteenth century. These treatises formalized a distinction between “Oriental” and “Occidental” gems that was also a distinction between hard and soft gems. The best judges of hardness were gem cutters, a group that participated in mineralogy through the culture of collecting. Finally, the knowledge of cutters contributed to the quantification of hardness in the form of the hardness scale and the scratch sclerometer.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subjects: | D History General and Old World > D History (General) > D204 Modern History H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor Q Science > QE Geology |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > History | ||||||||
| SWORD Depositor: | Library Publications Router | ||||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Determinative mineralogy -- History -- 18th century, Gems -- History -- 18th century, Artisans -- History -- 18th century, Science -- Philosophy -- History -- 18th century | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | History of Science | ||||||||
| Publisher: | SAGE Publications | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 1753-8564 | ||||||||
| Official Date: | December 2022 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 60 | ||||||||
| Number: | 4 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 500-523 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1177/00732753221087558 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Reuse Statement (publisher, data, author rights): | Bycroft, M. (2022). The hand of the connoisseur: Gems and hardness in Enlightenment mineralogy. History of Science, 60(4), 500–523. Copyright © The Author(s) 2022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/00732753221087558 | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 22 March 2023 | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 22 March 2023 | ||||||||
| RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
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