Going forward, I’d be really interested in doing a very comprehensive page (or pages) on the guild system in Paris. Though our page centers on Materials and Their Makers, I feel like we kind of left out explicitly explaining the roles and importance of the artisans in favor of talking about materials. Maybe we could divide it up somehow according to the different materials we’ve presented on our site, using plates with images of artisans from the Encyclopédie.

Providing information about the makers might also open up discussion of French society at large in the 18th century, and how the Encylopédie impacted people of various classes. I know that it is associated with revolutionary thought, so I think examining its political nature is important. Maybe we could even find connections between luxury objects and political revolution? Either way, I think there’s an interesting comparison or contrast to be made.

On a more technical note, I think we should try to clean up the look of our website a bit (finding his-res images whenever possible, making pages more uniform, etc). It might also be useful to edit down a bit, because we do have a lot of information right now which could potentially be overwhelming if we add any more. But overall, I’m really proud of what we’ve accomplished and look forward to the final product at the end of the summer.