Making and Knowing Project – Intersections of Craft Making and Scientific Knowing

Digital Critical Edition is live!

Our long-awaited Digital Critical Edition here. See it for yourself!

About the Making and Knowing Project

Click here to learn more about what we are doing at Columbia University to create a digital critical edition of a 16th-century book of secrets.

Research and Teaching Companion

The Research and Teaching Companion supports educators interested in incorporating hands-on and experiential learning into their curriculums.

Laboratory Seminars

Reconstruction of the materials and techniques described in the manuscript is being carried out in a laboratory at Columbia University, led by Professor Pamela Smith.

Photos from our Lab

See images of reconstructions from our years of work in the lab. Click the image to link to our photo repository.

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EXPLORE A HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPT: Our digital critical edition, Secrets of Craft and Nature, brings a sixteenth-century artisanal text to life with multimedia essays and historical reconstructions.

TEACH OR TRY HANDS ON LEARNING: View resources for adapting experiential learning to any space, learner level, or budget with lesson plans, case studies, and other resources.

CREATE AN EDITION: EditionCrafter is our open-access, customizable, and easy-to-use tool for publishing digital editions in a low-cost and easily sustained format.

LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR PROJECT: Since 2014, we've explored the intersection of artistic making and scientific knowing through experiential and interdisciplinary teaching and research.