Date/Time
Date(s) - 15 Nov 2012
6:00 PM - 7:30 PM
Location
Butler Library, Columbia University
Category(ies) No Categories
Reading, Writing, and Cooking: Exploring Marginalia in an Early Modern Cookbook
Deborah L. Krohn, Associate Professor, Bard Graduate Center
Thursday, November 15, 2012
6pm
523 Butler Library, Columbia University
535 West 114th St.
Where do histories of cookbooks as objects intersect with the practices of cooking and reading? To explore this question, Deborah Krohn analyzes marginal notations in a 1610 copy of Bartolomeo Scappi´s /Opera/, the first illustrated cookbook. First published in Venice in 1570, the
/Opera/ went through about seven editions, remaining marketable until at least 1643, the date of the final edition. The marginalia in this edition enable us to suggest how the book was used by a steward or major domo, one of the book´s presumed main audiences. Annotated working texts such as these help us to understand the nature and forms of artisanal knowledge in the Early Modern period.
Deborah L. Krohn teaches Italian Renaissance decorative arts and material culture at the Bard Graduate Center. Her current book project,
/Bartolomeo Scappi´s Paper Kitchen: Food and Knowledge in Renaissance Italy, /explores the history and reception of the first illustrated
cookbook in Europe. She has written an article on early 17th-century English songs based on the cries of street hawkers and collaborated on the 2009 exhibition /Art/