Metalworking Primary Sources Bibliography
ProjectAbout
This resource brings together historical primary source manuals, recipes and descriptions of metalworking processes, as well as translations of these texts where they are available. This project is a work in progress and in its early stages as a pilot for a more substantial resource of primary source texts on metallurgy and metalworking. The scope of the bibliography is antiquity to the end of the nineteenth century, generally only incorporating later works which discuss pre-industrial technologies.
Currently, the bibliography predominantly lists European-language texts, but it is hoped that it will ultimately be a global resource incorporating texts from around the world. To this end, suggestions for inclusion are very welcome. Links to digitised versions of these texts are included where these are available; works in copyright are listed for reference only.
In its present form, the bibliography is generated from a Zotero library and, consequently, is currently subject to the limitations of Zotero. For example, Zotero does not readily accommodate standard referencing for ancient texts and only allows simple dating for publications, so it is difficult to indicate the original period of a text as well as the modern publication date of an original text or a translation. It is hoped that a bespoke database will be developed during the next phase of this project which will allow for better nuance in bibliographic records and sophisticated search functions.
Library
Images
Jacques-Raymond Lucotte (designer), Robert Bénard (engraver), “Orfèvre grossier Pl. 1” [detail], in Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers Vol. 25. Image courtesy ARTFL Encyclopédie, University of Chicago.