MAX-PLANCK-INSTITUT FÜR WISSENSCHAFTSGESCHICHTE Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

Event

Jul 28, 2026
Seeing is Believing: But Can You Believe Your Eyes?

In this hands-on workshop, our visiting Senior Research Scholar Barbara Berrie explores how artists and craftspeople have used sight, touch, taste, and material testing to judge the quality, purity, and authenticity of pigments. Participants will consider how historical sensory practices relate to modern scientific analysis and what each can reveal, or obscure, about artistic materials.

The session will focus on natural and synthetic blue pigments, particularly azurite and artificial copper blues. Participants will prepare monochrome paints using a range of historical pigments and binders, apply them to papyrus or parchment, and record their observations on color, texture, flow, and handling. The Reading Group meeting asks how practical experimentation and instrumental analysis can be brought together to improve our understanding of the history of blue.

 

Texts to be discussed:

Mary Virginia Orna, Manfred J. D. Low, and Norbert S. Baer, “Synthetic Blue Pigments: Ninth to Sixteenth Centuries. I. Literature,” Studies in Conversation 25, no. 2 (1980): 53–63. 

Mary Virginia Orna, Manfred J. D. Low, and Norbert S. Baer, “Synthetic Blue Pigments: Ninth to Sixteenth Centuries. II. 'Silver Blue,’” Studies in Conversation 30, no. 4 (1985): 155–160.

Ellen H. Purdy, Sarah Critchley, Andrea Kirkham, and Michael Casford, “Illuminating the Problem of Blue Verditer Synthesis in the Early Modern English Period: Chemical Characterisation and Mechanistic Understanding,” npj Heritage Science 12 (2024): 138.

Related Project(s)
Address
MPIWG, Boltzmannstraße 22, 14195 Berlin, Germany
Room
Room 141
Contact and Registration

Few spaces are open to interested members of the public. Please contact Anthony Quickel or Mannat Johal to register.

About This Series

This reading group is convened with our external collaborators. “Metals and Minerals” is the third phase of Agriculture and the Making of Science after “Soil/Earth” and “Water.” The project is funded by the 2020 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize awarded by the DFG.

The Metals, Minerals, and the Life Cycle group holds regular sessions to discuss scholarship on themes like the extraction and use of metal ores and mineral deposits, conceptions of value and economy, and the dynamics of circulation, reuse, and trade. Sessions are structured around a set of central questions pertaining to the project’s colloquium series: 1) Making and Unmaking Value; 2) Crafted Forms and Skillful Doing; 3) Assaying and the Sensorium; and, 4) Raw Materials and Residues. We seek to approach this broad set of themes from a variety of disciplinary standpoints — historical, archaeological, and anthropological — and address debates that emerge in scholarship from across several regions.

2026-07-28T14:00:00SAVE IN I-CAL 2026-07-28 14:00:00 2026-07-28 15:30:00 Seeing is Believing: But Can You Believe Your Eyes? In this hands-on workshop, our visiting Senior Research Scholar Barbara Berrie explores how artists and craftspeople have used sight, touch, taste, and material testing to judge the quality, purity, and authenticity of pigments. Participants will consider how historical sensory practices relate to modern scientific analysis and what each can reveal, or obscure, about artistic materials. The session will focus on natural and synthetic blue pigments, particularly azurite and artificial copper blues. Participants will prepare monochrome paints using a range of historical pigments and binders, apply them to papyrus or parchment, and record their observations on color, texture, flow, and handling. The Reading Group meeting asks how practical experimentation and instrumental analysis can be brought together to improve our understanding of the history of blue.   Texts to be discussed: Mary Virginia Orna, Manfred J. D. Low, and Norbert S. Baer, “Synthetic Blue Pigments: Ninth to Sixteenth Centuries. I. Literature,” Studies in Conversation 25, no. 2 (1980): 53–63.  Mary Virginia Orna, Manfred J. D. Low, and Norbert S. Baer, “Synthetic Blue Pigments: Ninth to Sixteenth Centuries. II. 'Silver Blue,’” Studies in Conversation 30, no. 4 (1985): 155–160. Ellen H. Purdy, Sarah Critchley, Andrea Kirkham, and Michael Casford, “Illuminating the Problem of Blue Verditer Synthesis in the Early Modern English Period: Chemical Characterisation and Mechanistic Understanding,” npj Heritage Science 12 (2024): 138. MPIWG, Boltzmannstraße 22, 14195 Berlin, Germany Room 141 Europe/Berlin public