Crafting Nature

Crafting Nature. Arts, Plants, and the Environment offers interdisciplinary accounts on the centrality of the living earth and its plant-based materials (including oils, varnishes, and dyes) to artistic practice and the knowledge of nature, ca. 1450-1800. It foregrounds plants as active agents rather than passive suppliers of materials or mere subject matters, examining the power and virtues embedded in the vegetable kingdom and the agency of plants in material processes. Natural and human-made artifacts are discussed as complex sites and products in which nature, craft, and knowledge intersect, intertwine, and entangle. The book series reactivates the robust interconnectedness that once characterized the fields of art history, botany, and ecology for a richer understanding of the history of the early modern plant kingdom and the crafts it underpinned. The series addresses concerns about the use of the land, the impact of natural disasters, and matters of sustainability and agricultural expansion, confronting issues of exploitation of resources, the destruction of the natural world, and technological transformation of nature. The perspective that informs the book series stems from a rarely seen dialogue among philosophers, historians of science, and art historians, resulting in a set of profound eco-critical insights into today’s environmental challenges and our efforts to reposition ourselves with respect to nature.