Iconography and common knowledge usually associate glass with transparency, while the typical gleam of the material transferred to the objects defines one of its most given features, stated also in words as in glassiness. As a practice well established in the Middle Ages – and before – painters had taken advantage of the fact that glass offers a wide range of opportunities to play with reflection, optic and viewpoints. A goblet or a ewe half-full of wine on a table, the liquid seen through the container, could be used not only to depict both a banquet and a simple meal, but it also provided an opportunity to the artist to show his ability. The latter by means of how that depiction could impr
Zooming into History: An Interview with Cristina Balloffet Carr on Examining Early Modern Textiles U
Cristina Balloffet Carr, conservator for early modern textiles at the New York Metropolitan Museum, is a pioneer of digital microscopy for textiles (fig. 1, 2). Alongside John Style’s Spinning Wheel project, Cristina’s work inspired Ulinka Rublack to integrate digital microscopy into her project on the history of feather-work. The usage of the microscope is likewise a crucial element of the research that Stefan Hanß is conducting, as a member of the Materialized Identities group in co-investigation with Ulinka Rublack, on the techniques, skills, and hands-on knowledge of early modern European and indigenous feather-workers. Here Cristina Balloffet Carr explains why microscopy tells us so muc
