Constructing a Sensory Toolkit: Methodological Innovation in the Study of Early Modern Artefacts

Sensory Subjectivities: Identities and Alterity in the Early Modern World is a collaboration between Leah R. Clark (Dept. for Continuing Education/Kellogg, Oxford), Anuradha Gobin at the University of Calgary, Canada and Helen Coffey at the Open University. It was funded by the TORCH International Partnership scheme and ran from 2023-2025.

For our final workshop we brought together a group of interdisciplinary early modern scholars to put into practice some of the methods we discussed during our online reading group over the past two years. The first day consisted of short presentations exploring different methodologies to study the past, ranging from looking at particular materials such as silver, textiles, and water, or considering spaces such as galleys or landscapes. Some of the presentations were accompanied by interactives, including imagining ourselves as specific personas on an early modern galley and viewing a landscape print by Dürer in a landscape, as one 16^th-century individual did (we even had a picnic for this interactive!). This allowed for creative exercises that provoked us to ask different questions of the past and urged us to think differently about how we do historic research. We encouraged a safe and creative space to experiment with different approaches and methodologies, and the result was productive and lively.

Brainstorming the Sensory Artefact Toolkit. Photo: Morgan Phillips, Morphology Media

On the second day, we took experimentation seriously, working together in small groups to build a ‘sensory artefact toolkit,’ to consider how we might use social science models of positionality mapping and positionality statements to study artefacts and beholders of the past. This was a particularly productive exercise, enabling us to think differently about how we do historic research but also a chance to question our own assumptions of historic actors and artefacts. We are now working to put together a toolkit (in the first instance as a downloadable pdf), which could be used in teaching and research, so watch this space!

Working with the blind and partially sighted at the Pitt Rivers Museum. Photo: Morgan Phillips, Morphology Media

We also worked with the blind and partially sighted community, with a handling session at the Pitt Rivers Museum, led by Susan Griffiths, community engagement officer for GLAM. This allowed us to work together with this particular group to think about how looking is only one component of understanding historical objects. This was a productive knowledge exchange and got us thinking of different categories of questions to ask of historic objects as well as raised specific issues around positionality and our own assumptions and biases when we examine artefacts. It also pushed against traditional hierarchies in academic research, specifically around who holds knowledge and placed emphasis on the creative possibilities of knowledge exchange.

Handling session at the Ashmolean Museum, looking at a Portuguese ewer, c. 1520-30, commissioned by Manual I of Portugal and a trumpet. Photo: Morgan Phillips, Morphology Media

Finally, we had a handling session with early modern objects in the Ashmolean, led by Matthew Winterbottom, Assistant Keeper, Curator of Decorative Arts and Sculpture. The examples ranged from a small statue made for an elite female patron (Isabella d’Este) to elaborate drinking cups to drug jars that would have had a broader distribution, as well as an early modern trumpet. This allowed us to think carefully about how historic beholders engaged with a wide variety of objects but also how certain objects were intended to be playful and delight not only the eye, but instead, some of these artefacts asked for an embodied engagement from the beholder, demanding us to touch, smell, hear, and use our imagination. It also raised questions about who got to behold such objects and the variation in experience depending on class, gender, and race.

Although our TORCH funding is coming to an end, we anticipate applying for further funding and coming together again, as we feel there is so much more we can do with these new methodologies and practices.