Making Featherwork in Early Modern Europe

Abstract

This chapter charts the unknown history of early modern European featherworking and its relationship with the world of matter and making. Focusing on featherworkers’ activities in Antwerp, Brussels, Dresden, Leipzig, London, Madrid, Milan, Nuremberg, Paris, Prague, Stuttgart, Turin, and Venice between 1500 and 1800, I study the people, production, networks, materials, techniques, and products of this largely forgotten craft. Over the course of these centuries, artisans developed their initial engagements with feathers from a culture of making to an entrepreneurial culture of decorum. These European artisans’ forms of material engagement, I argue, engendered feathers’ affective atmospheres. The craft of featherworking affected the material translation of aesthetics since the application of complex techniques helped to perform the material properties of feathers.