Cooking pots, tableware, and the changing sounds of sociability in Italy, 1300–1700

This article considers how the sounds produced by the preparation and consumption of meals in Italy changed between around 1300 and 1700. It argues that by focusing on sound, and by using ecological approaches, we can rediscover obscured connections between different categories of material objects. By examining material and textual evidence for three categories of objects associated with cooking and dining – metalwork, ceramics, and glass – the article traces changes in the material cultures of kitchen and table, and the clear impact these changes had on domestic soundscapes. It considers these sound-producing objects as agents of social interaction, exploring the social relationships they constructed, and the role sound played in those relationships. The article then focuses on the practices of cooking and dining, and the way they shaped the sound of objects. Finally, the article situates objects and social practices within the spatial context of the home, tracing an increasing impetus to manage and control specific types of sound in relation to gender. In the discourse on hospitality, noise came to signify a badly-managed, and therefore morally dubious, household, while silence testified to decorous and authoritative domestic management

Material and Temporal Powers at the Casino di San Marco (1574\u20131621)Laboratories of Art

Built in 1574 by court engineer and architect Bernardo Buontalenti for Francesco I de Medici, the Casino di San Marco represents a unique example of a late Renaissance site of alchemical research, art collecting and political court. Francesco I\u2019s program to enhance the chemical arts and make it into a body of highly sophisticated knowledge was reflected in the architecture of the Casino which hosted a number of laboratories, several of which survived Francesco\u2019s premature death in 1587 and remained active until the beginning of the seventeenth century. It was in this building that the bulk of the first and most successful treatise on glassmaking, Antonio Neri\u2019s L\u2019arte vetraria (1612), took shape. On the basis of recent archival research, which has provided fresh evidence on the artists employed in the Casino by Francesco and by his son Antonio and on the artifacts which were produced in the laboratories, this contribution briefly explores the history of the Casino and its role in putting chemical arts at the centre of the Medici\u2019s patronage. Galileo\u2019s arrival in Florence and his telescopic discoveries did not overshadow the extensive presence of chemical arts that, in fact, survived the impact of Galilean scienc