Proposal of ideas: Materials and their Makers/Bodies in Space
The goal of the “Materials and their Makers” group is to draw attention to the artisans behind the craft of the many beautiful items of the Tessé room. The “Bodies in Space” group will focus on re-introducing people to the Tessé room. My personal role is between the Bodies in Space and the Encyclopédie projects, in that I would like to draw attention to clothing and textile makers, their workshops, and their techniques.
My main idea is to digitally recreate an outfit consisting of multiple parts (lace, feathers, decorations, main body, stay, etc.). I would then give the user the ability to click on each part of this object and see how the artisans made it, using images of their studios, tools, etc. from the Encyclopédie. I would incorporate plates, such as those showing how each piece of an outfit was cut and sewn together. I would also use photographs Professor Higonnet took in lace museums showing how lace was made. Additionally, I could add a short description of the conditions of the laborers in each workshop.
A secondary idea is to highlight the use of different types of materials (silk, cotton, wool, linen, etc.), and how each of these had different values and uses due to consumer demand. I could give descriptions and/or use images of laborers who made different types of textiles (for example, in the Sewell reading, division of labor in silk-making is described on p. 95). If there is time, I could use a similar method for the entire Tessé room, allowing users to click on other textiles in the room and see how they were made, the conditions of the laborers, etc. A similar project could be done for all the furniture, in which users can click on various objects and see how the component parts were put together, and from which workshop each piece came. That might be outside the scope of accomplishment for one semester, so I will begin by focusing on the clothing workshops, and can move from there.