ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Drying, Mounting, and Knowing: Herbaria between Practices and Science

• In Event: Practitioners, Artisans and Instruments in the Making of Premodern Science, III

English Abstract

Historical herbaria of dried plants are objects that sit at the intersection of genres. As a result, they are often overlooked by historians and curators of historical collections because they contain specific biological material. They are also neglected by natural scientists, as they do not use modern nomenclature and do not meet the standards of contemporary herbarium collections. Nevertheless, they are a key source that reveals much about the development of knowledge transmission concerning plants. Fortunately, in recent years, a new wave of interest has emerged for these fragile objects (see especially the works of Cristofolini, Thijsee, Baldini, Skružná, Stefanaki, and Flannery, among others).
The first herbaria were fabricated in the first half of the 16th century within the universities of Pisa and Bologna, and they were closely connected with research and teaching. Their production soon spread, and they began to serve a variety of purposes. My paper will present two case studies of herbaria from Czech monastic collections previously understudied by historians and examine how the technique of drying and mounting plants was used by a barber-surgeon from the Lake Constance region at the end of the 16th century and by a gardener from the university botanical garden in Padua in the late 17th century, thereby revealing the interconnections between practicioners and scholars.

Author

• Lucie Strnadová