Grotto Annotation field notes
Table of Contents
Date and Time:
2017.10.27, 3:24pm
Location: Toronto, CanadaSubject: Prepartions for fieldwork in Chandler 260
Purpose:
To reflect on my personal experience working in a chemistry lab on the reconstruction of grotto recipes found in a 16th century anonymously authored French manuscript, Ms. Fr. 640.
Preparation and guidelines:
Spent nearly 6 weeks training in techniques relevant to fieldwork
Received physical exposure to my specific environment, including safety protocol
All fieldwork is carried out under direct oversight of a senior scholar
Expected to lay out the technical procedure and theoretical framework, based upon historical research, on the reconstruction of Grottoes, the fieldwork's primary undertaking
Anthropology sources:
Bruno Latour Laboratory life
Tim Ingold The Perception of the Environment: Essay in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill
Raymond Tallis, The Hand: A Philosophical Inquiry into Human Being, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003), chapter 1.
Julian Thomas, "Phenomenology and Material Culture" in Handbook of Material Culture, ed. Christopher Tilley et al. (Sage 2006), 43-59;
Ann-Sophie Lehmann, "Wedging, Throwing, Dipping and Dragging - How Motions, Tools and Materials Make Art." Folded Stones, eds. Barbara Baert and Trees de Mits (Institute for Practice-based Research in the Arts: Ghent 2009), pp. 41-60.
Paul Rabinow, Reflections on Field Work in Morocco
Name: Reut Ullman and Scott
Date and Time:
2017.11.20, 12:10pm
Location: Engineering building at Columbia and Chandler 260Subject: Making the frame
Tools:
Large handsaw
Small handsaw
Filer
Clamps
Materials:
Wooden crate (18x12.5x9.5)
Glue
Before reconstructing the grotto recipes found in Ms. Fr. 640 on 118r_3; 118r_1; 040r_5 and 110r_2, I needed to fashion a wooden frame, insides of which were to be layered with stretched linen and on to which I would glue ingredients outlined in the recipes. The recipes in Ms. Fr. 640 describe only the interior design of the grotto, so I was free to determine the grotto’s outer structure. Historically, Early Modern buildings had used wooden frames which they then layered with brick, so my decision to use a wooden frame was in keeping with this tradition. However, I did not use brick to line the inner walls of the grotto, which was the historical practice, because firebrick is expensive, and I would need to make mortar to layer the said bricks, which is time-consuming, and for reconstruction purposes the use of brick was not necessary.
I purchased, 11.19.2017, a large wooden crate from Home Depot (18x12.5x9.5), opened at the top, with the intention to saw off one side, for easier hand access and with the eventual plan to model the exterior of the grotto, to be completed after this annotation, on the one at Fontainebleau with a three-arched entrance.
As I was not familiar with woodcutting tools, I was availed the expertise of Scott, with whom I went to the woodshop lab at Columbia’s Engineering building. We had initially thought to use an electric handsaw, but as I required a precise cut, and the use of a handsaw necessitated the frame to be tightly held in place by clamps, Scott suggested an old-fashioned handsaw, a decision I am grateful we took. A handsaw has not changed in appearance since the 1600s, and for the historical nature of our reconstruction, it was fitting. Because the wooden panels were held in place by staples in a design that each panel was adjacently held by another, I could not simply cut at the seam but had to cut out a portion of the back wall, making sure not to hit the staples, and to leave enough wood to support side panels. Scott helped to determine the exact dimensions to be cut, and marked them off on the wood panel. He then handed me a large hand saw, and instructed to saw down. I had never held a real saw, so this was a novel experience. It was light, seemingly simple and easy to use, but as I held it in my hand, I felt I had very little control of the full length of the blade. My control was limited to a few inches past the handle, which I gripped as one would hold a gun, with an index finger pressed against the exterior portion of the handle.
The sawing itself proved infinitely trickier. It was naïve to assume, and even more to admit, that the spartan simplicity of the saw’s appearance had me thinking the sawing would not call for much skill beyond the ability to use a large knife. How mistaken I was! The saw jerked against the wood, the more tightly I gripped the saw and the more pressure I applied to the wood via the saw, the more the wood resisted my attempt to cut into it. Scott then advised not to apply pressure to the wood, but to rub the saw gently against the wood, as applying lotion, to work with the material not against it. This seemed to do the trick and the wood gave in to my attempts to cut it. This is not to say it was easy to saw, it was not! and I sweated quite a bit. It was hard work, and my hand and arm quickly tired. I stopped half way down, and Scott took over, as I had begun to saw directly on the drawn line, and expectedly veered off the straight course the line dictated. Scott tried to fix it midway.
When he completed, I started on the second side. Not surprisingly, I took little heed of Scott’s initial directions, and again applied force to the wood, and again it resisted, the saw jerked on hitting the wood. This time, however, I self-corrected, and proceeded to massage the wood softly with the blade, and the wood quickly gave in. This time I sawed to the end myself. The sawing took some time, but I enjoyed the process. It was both laborious and relaxing. I sweated, grew tired, but it felt gratifying.
Once I was finished, we still had to cut across, but Scott took out a soft hammer, and hit the bottom of the panel until it popped out, unevenly as some pieces still held on. At this point, he whipped out a smaller saw, of design I had never seen (pictured below), and proceeded to trim the smaller pieces off. After a few minutes, I took over for him, but found the saw uncomfortable to use, and its blade too small and thus time consuming. He then brought out a filing tool that resembled a large Kitchen knife (pictured below). I took to this tool immediately, it felt familiar, its size allowed for total control, and even though this tool was duller (lacking a blade) and thus slower at its function than the smaller saw, it was infinitely more enjoyable to use because it felt like a large kitchen knife. My enthusiasm for a familiar tool translated into vigour, and patience, and the unwillingness to stop until I hit the penciled markings, something I likely would not have done had I continued working with a smaller saw. The appearance of my frame was good enough before the filer was introduced, anyway the outer frame would be layered, so it made little sense to perfect.
In the process of sawing off the panel, some parts came apart, as the wooden panel had a horizontal grain, and we were cutting vertically. This was inevitable, and once we were done sawing, Scott glued the two pieces that came off, and no one was the wiser.
I then spent sometime thinking about my experience with the saw, and in the course of my conversation with Scott, whose hand was visibly recently injured by a saw, I reasoned that aside from my complete inexperience with using a saw, I was also acutely aware and fearful of the potential consequence of misuse (and splinters!), to which I responded with a tight grip, tense posture, and physical pressure, applied to the wood. The fear of the saw triggered a ‘fight or flight’ response, and as I had to saw off the side panel I could not flee, so I fought. But this was a wrong response. The more I fought, the more the wood resisted. It was only when I relaxed that the wood gave into me. I had to engage with the wood, in a dialogue of sorts, rather than force my will on it.
As Scott was rather generous with his time, he accompanied me to the lab at Chandler 260, at 1:40, to help layer the inner walls of the wooden structure with linen. I cut out 30x18 in. of linen material, which I then stapled to the wood panels, covering two walls and the floor. I then cut out another piece of linen measuring 9x12 in. which was stapled to the backend of the wooden structure. In some places the staples were thicker than both the wood and the linen and peered out, so we used a hammer to bend them in, as much as they would go. At this point the linen layered wooden structure, henceforth to be referred to as the grotto, was complete and ready for use.
Name: Reut Ullman
Date and Time:
2017.11.27, 1:20pm
Location: 260 ChandlerSubject: Making Imitation Rock
Experiment 1: reconstruction of recipe found on 40r_5
<id>p040r_5</id>
<head>Grottes</head>
<ab>Pour remplir quelque lieu vuide qui ne peult pas estre<lb/>
charge de quelque roches pendant on mect pres du<lb/>
foeu un lopin de <m>parchemin</m> espes qui se retire & samo<exp>n</exp>cele<lb/>
puys on le painct a destrempe puys a <m>huile</m> apres on<lb/>
laplique.</ab>
</div>
<div>
<id>p040r_5</id>
<head>Grottos</head>
<ab>To fill some empty place that cannot be laden with hanging rocks, one puts a piece of thick <m>parchment</m> close to the fire, which shrinks & crumples. Then one paints it with distemper, then in <m>oil</m>. Next one affixes it.</ab>
I began by carefully reading the translated version of the recipe, as the original was found in French, and as my French skill are mediocre, I quickly glanced over the French version, but carefully followed the English one. The English translation is a checked transcription of the original French, and could be depended upon for accuracy. Moreover, however weak my French is, I understood the gist of the French version, and did not doubt the accuracy of the English translation.
As this experiment is but one of a series of experiments undertaken to reconstruct multiple grotto recipes found in BnF Ms. 640, this recipe was a two-part experiment, done over two days.
Making Imitation rock
Equipment:
Hot Plate
Tongs
Plate
Ingredients:
2 pieces of parchment
In the recipe 040r_5, the author practitioner suggests to “fill some empty place that cannot be laden with hanging rock” with an imitation rock, which he writes could be fashioned by taking a thick piece of parchment and holding it over close fire, until it “shrinks & crumples”.
To undertake this experiment, I had to use parchment paper, found on site, and a heat source.
The parchment paper used was made of authentic cowhide (likely). As parchment is expensive material, and as this recipe suggests it was not intended to replicate all stones but only to “fill some empty place”, I decided to use two previously cut out parchment pieces. The success or failure of this experiment would determine if more parchment of other size and shape was to be used. Finding appropriate heat source took some thinking. While I had initially thought to use a blowtorch, I was made aware that the torch may burn the parchment, rather than crumple it, as the heat may prove to be too strong, too fast. Anyway, it cannot be easily controlled to achieve the desired effect, especially in the laboratory setting. If I had used a blowtorch, I would need to control for the space between the parchment and the fire, a space over which I could exact little control, as I had to set up my work station inside a rather confined fume hood, as a safety precaution. Thus, it was decided that an electric hot plate would take the place of a blowtorch. An electric hot plate is a controlled heat source, with 6 separate dials of increasing heat, ranging from minimum to 5. To avoid getting burned, I used metal tongs which grasped the parchment, as I held it at a distance of an inch to an inch and half from the heat source. I turned the dial to 1, on the lower end of temperature controls and waited. As a few minutes passed, and I noticed no change, I raised the dial to 3, and within a few minutes, noticed an expanding shadow slowly forming over the parchment, until it completely engulfed it. Once the parchment slightly darkened, it began gradually to bend in at one sides, and then at another.
The bending at first seemed uniform, but as I raised the heat to dial 4, the parchment began to contort, bending and twisting out and in without much logic (my logic of course). I could not predict the direction the heat may bend or twist the parchment. I merely stood and watched the parchment behave in ways I could never have fathomed, after all, the recipe said it will “shrink and crumple”, qualitative results that I had thought would amount to the way a piece of paper looks on being scrunched into a ball. The finished product, or rather the point at which I had determined it was finished shrinking and crumpling, having only vaguely resembled its original triangular shape. All three ends were bent or contorted in different directions, while the body resembled uneven sand dunes. Indeed, the colour of the parchment, and the visible textured ridges gave it the appearance of desert on a windy day. As I held the undulating parchment in the palm of my hand, I began to see its rock like potential. The parchment proved surprisingly strong, even as I applied considerable force to bend one of the sides it would not comply. And even though the imitation rock was not at all sphere-like in shape, it was meant as a stand-in, a surface decoy, and thus did not require much body. Moreover, considering the price of parchment I could not afford to sacrifice much surface length, and neither could the author practitioner. The fact that it did not crumple in the way I had thought it would worked to my advantage. The ridges gave the parchment a nice rock like appearance.
The next piece of parchment was of a long but very narrow rectangular shape.
Having gained some expertise in parchment crumpling, I turned the already heated hot plate dial to 5, its highest temperature, and watched the elongated thing portion of the parchment fold-in almost immediately.
And as I manipulated the position of my hand, I saw it fold and unfold. I exercised quite a bit of control over this parchment piece, something I felt I was robbed off in my earlier experiment. As I continued to twist and turn my hand, move it closer and further away from the heat, the very narrow portion of the parchment continued to behave in the way that gave me the feeling I was controlling its shape. But this was not for long. All of the sudden, it folded into itself, as a ribbon might on being teased too much with scissor blades. The shape this parchment took was rather ugly, grotesque even. It folded in, rather than out, as it did in the previous experiment, but even its folds lacked grace. If not for the unevenly rolled tail, it reminded me of a developing embryo. Not to mention holding the parchment too close to the plate slightly burned it. I tried bending it into shape of some sort by trying to scrunch the tail end and twist it inside the main body of the mangled parchment, but the parchment proved too strong and only allowed me to bend it in just enough to fully resemble a developing embryo. It did not look like a rock. And it didn’t take too long to realize the reason for this outcome, the shape of the parchment. It was too narrow, and too small. Any shape it took would have taken would have fallen below expectations.
Name: Reut Ullman
Date and Time:
2017.11.27, 2:20pm
Location: 260 ChandlerSubject: Painting Imitation Rock with distemper (part 1)
Experiment 2
The next part of the experiment involved painting the imitation rocks. The author-practitioner continued, “Then one paints it with distemper, then in <m>oil</m>. Next one affixes it.</ab>”
Colouring the imitation rock (parchment)
Ingredients:
Rabbit skin glue (10%)
Heat source (hot plate)
Thermometer Bavarian Green Earth (Kremer)
Brown earth Otranto (Kremer)
Water Dropper
Plates Brushes
Muller
Glass board
Beakers
The directions to paint the rock seemed easy enough, but what does it mean to paint with ‘distemper’ and why does the author practitioner first direct to paint with distemper and then with oil?
"Detrempe" is used in the Ms. Fr. 640, but not exclusively for "distemper" paint, which is usually pigment + glue. I consulted Cleo Nisse's annotation, in which she clarified that "distemper" in the 16th century could also mean other proteins used as a binder (such as egg or gum arabic). It is usually distinguished from oil paints, in which oil is used as a binder. And because the author practitioner explicitly writes to paint with oil after painting with distemper, I reasoned that the first direction to paint with distemper called for the use of a binding agent like gesso, which is rabbit skin glue, commonly used by 16th century artisans.
The lab had prepared rabbit skin glue in the fridge, and so I used the little bit already available. Rabbit skin glue was refrigerated, but even if it wasn’t, the glue needed to be warm on application, otherwise it would stiffen and form gel-like peaks that would sit atop of the canvas, and not absorb or spread on brush stroke application.
For this reason, I transferred 3 plastic teaspoons of rabbit skin glue into a small beaker, set the beaker on top of the electric hot plate, turned to 1, and inserted a thermometer to measure the temperature of the glue. Rabbit skin glue needed to reach 60 Celsius on use.
In the meantime, using a glass board on to which I dispensed about 1/3 teaspoon of Bavarian green pigment, I added two drops of water from a water dropper, and proceeded to mull the pigment. The pigment was thoroughly mulled, within seconds it seemed, and was ready for use. Meanwhile, the rabbit skin glue had warmed up as well, at which point, using a brush I proceeded to dip the brush into the mulled pigment, followed by rabbit skin glue and apply this paint mixture, or distemper, to the surface of my rock.
As the brushstrokes coated the parchment, the pigment appeared faint, and dull. It lacked life, but for moss as it was intended to imitate moss, I did not mind its colour. Its colour gave it a dried old green, unintentional rustic, and all the more authentic for a rustic grotto, or so I had thought.
Having daubed one parchment rock with patches and strokes of Bavarian green pigment, I set the piece aside, and proceeded to mull out the Brown Earth pigment.
I followed the same process as with Bavarian green, but immediately noticed the two pigments were constitutionally different, aside from their colours, brown had a deeper hue, and this would prove problematic. As I was still supposed to use rabbit skin glue that had long since congealed, I reheated it, as before. Once the glue was ready for use, I applied the brown pigment to one parchment and watched how quickly my seemingly careful and slow brushstrokes swallowed the green ones made earlier.
Brown earth pigment had an overpowering deep hue, such that even places where green was still visible faded into the background. I tried to reverse this, switched over to using Bavarian green, painted over the brown, but the green was too dull to assert itself, or overpower the brown. Discouraged, I decided to abandon colouring with distemper, and switch to oil that I was to continue another day.
Name: Reut Ullman
Date and Time:
2017.11.29, 11:20am
Location: 260 ChandlerSubject: Painting imitation rock with distemper (part 2)
Colouring the imitation rock (parchment) [part 2]
Ingredients:
Linseed oil
Bavarian Green Earth (Kremer)
Brown earth Otranto (Kremer)
Dropper
Plates
Brushes
Muller
Glass board
Beakers
I returned to the lab after a two-day break, and found the painted rocks dried, and ready for use. The colours had dulled, and I was excited to liven them with a fresh coat of paint. As before, I took out a glass board, dispensed 1/3 teaspoon of Brown Earth, added two drops of linseed oil. and mulled it.
The mulling was relatively quick, but slower than with water, at the previous session. Once the pigment was mulled, I daubed the oil brush in prepared pigment and applied thin brushstrokes to the rocks. The colour was brighter, livelier, it had vitality. And in my excitement, I forgot that I had intended to leave some parts painted in rabbit skin glue, and painted over all brown parts. This was a mistake, but I was not entirely disappointed as the hue produced by rabbit skin glue was not to my liking. For the experiment, however, it was a mistake, as the point of painting in oil had a specific purpose, to play with shadows, and create depth. But I was surprised to find that painting with oil did not prevent me from creating depth, which I discovered in painting with Bavarian Green Earth.
I repeated the process of mulling with Brown Earth, described above, using Bavarian Green Earth, but the mulling was slowed by the composition of the pigment. It was grainy, and required another drop of linseed oil. On being mulled, it made an awful screechy noise, and only stopped once more oil was added, which considerably sped up the mulling. The hue of the Bavarian green earth was deeper, but only slightly as when mixed with rabbit skin glue. Once applied to the parchment, it had an even livelier tint, and coated the parchment, rather than be absorbed in it. This I was told was the intended effect, but the coating would have been even more apparent had the oiled pigment not been layered atop of another oiled pigment but rather atop of the rabbit skin glue pigment. The end result was a coated, mossy/dirty rock, but glistening as though layered with clear polish.
Name: Reut Ullman
Date and Time:
2017.11.29, 12:20pm
Location: 260 ChandlerSubject: Grinding paper and glass
11.29.17
Grinding glass and paper
The next experiment involved recreation of a small part of a large recipe found in 118r_a3. The author practitioner calls for:
Le <m>papier</m> pille & mesle de <m>verre</m> pille
<m>paper</m> pestled and mixed with pestled <m>glass</m>;
Recreating this recipe was a two-part experiment, the first involved grinding 17th century paper, and the second was grinding glass
Grinding paper
Ingredients:
Replicated 17th century sized (gelatin coated) paper, 2 pieces (7 cm x 2.5 cm)
- made by the History of the Book project at IowaU
Granite Pestle and Mortar
Scissors
Ruler
Pencil
Reconstructing this recipe felt like working blindfolded throughout and indeed this feeling has not yet subsided. Grinding glass was a somewhat familiar activity. Although, I have never grinded glass before, I have inadvertently smashed glass many times, and this, I thought, was to be no different, I was wrong. Now, as for grinding paper, it was a never before attempted activity, I did not even believe that paper could be grinded, much as one would grind nuts, not that I have ever attempted that activity by hand either.
On touch the paper felt thicker than the typical piece of paper does, and coarser. I touched both the sized and the unsized. The sized felt thicker to the touch than the unsized. This I was told was the result of added gelatin, which the paper was coated with in order to stop the ink from soaking through the paper. The gelatin acted as a resistant layer, if not to stop the ink completely, at least to act as another obstacle to the ink’s tendency to seep through and penetrate the material.
I was advised (by Pamela Smith, earlier on), and it made logical sense to me, to cut up the already small piece of paper into even smaller pieces, and proceed to grind those out inside a mortar with a pestle.
It was not easy, but it also wasn’t too hard, as the paper did not resist my attempts. The only concern I had while grinding out the paper was its tendency to latch to the bottom of the pestle, such that only the intervention of my fingers detached it from the bottom of the pestle, followed by their return to the mortar, to be grinded out.
The first piece of paper took about 15-20 min to grind out, but with breaks taken in between. The second piece, of the same dimensions, took about 5 min, as I cut it up into even smaller pieces, and worked throughout, without taking either excessive breaks or when doing so, only pausing, rather than stopping. The amount yielded was still negligible.
But as the 17th reconstructed paper is costly, and limited in supply, I reasoned this was enough for now. Anyway, I could always grind more should the need arise. The end mixture looked ashen. In colour and texture, it resembled dried up residue found in crematoriums, or indeed the cremated remains themselves. It was not finely ground. The mixture tended to form into tiny lumps, interspersed with dust-sized particles throughout, but as a whole looked grounded enough for my purposes. I was not sure what those purposes were and am still not, so the decision to call quits to grinding may have been a value judgement I had made out of desire to stop grinding paper, in its own right a rather tedious activity. Patience, I have come to realize, is key to these tasks, and in instances in which patience is lacking, or wearing thin, the point of cessation is determined not by expertise, experience, or forethought, but by the simple unwillingness to plod on.
Grinding glass
Ingredients:
Glass droppers or pipettes (2)
Glass canes (2)
Hammer
Ziplock bags (many)
Newspapers
Brown bags (5 or so)
Soup bowl containers (2)
I had looked forward to smashing glass and the experience did not disappoint. It is rather fun to smash things. Not to mention it is not as easy it looks; I sympathize with unruly rioters.
I had to take many precautions, for my own safety and others in the lab. To prevent pieces of shard flying about the room, I placed the glass objects inside a ziplock bag, which then went into a brown bag, placed on top of spread out newspapers, on the floor of the lab.
I was advised by Naomi to start by breaking the glass droppers, as their delicate built made them all too susceptible to even the slightest force, including by the action of two sets of fingers on each hand grasping the dropper, while twisting the hands horizontally in opposite directions.
I had smashed the glass droppers within what seemed like a minute, withdrew the shattered pieces, and found them wholly to my liking. They were not smashed to fine sand proportions, but were still small enough to appear satisfactory.
I then took to smashing another set of glass objects, two long thinly rounded but sturdy glass canes (of matted blue and light blue). The matte colouring is important to note, as on being smashed, they failed to glisten, like the transparent glass droppers had previously.
Smashing the canes proved infinitely more difficult. Despite their thinness, they were deceptively sturdy, thick, bodied. They did not break easily, even on repeated force. Perhaps, it is more accurate to say, they did not break beyond coarse chunks. I continued to pound, exerting my arm, applying force to the handle of the hammer, but with little results.
This continued for 15-20 minutes, during which I repeatedly changed brown bags, ziplock bags, newspapers. Each blow of the hammer punctured and ripped the brown bag until shards of glass began to fly about. I continued in much the same way for a while, making some progress but not enough. I let my arm dictate when to stop, if only to rethink my approach. I have come to rely more and more on my body when carrying out these experiments. I had no other quantitative markers, and the qualitative ones often proved vague and open to my interpretation. Thus, in instances when I had to make a judgement call, I let my body, its stamina, set the limits.
As my arm grew tired of performing a half revolution swing, I re-evaluated my approach. I reasoned that the glass I was smashing was stronger than the earlier one, even so, it was the double, and in some cases, triple layering that cushioned and dulled the blows of the hammer against the glass. I needed to thin the protective layering, between the hammer and the glass. This I did by transferring the glass pieces from a double to a single ziplock bag, and instead of a brown paper bag, I used cloth rags (on Tianna's advice). This seemed to help, and more glass pieces were shattered. More, but not too many. I then decided to transfer the shattered glass into a plastic bowl, but remove the larger pieces. Those I once more placed inside a ziplock bag, wrapped in one layer of cloth rags, and proceeded to smash. This worked well, and the pieces were all but smashed after several targeted blows. The damage sustained by the cloths rags was irreparable, and a few more blows would have had the glass shards flying about.
I transferred the remainder of the glass pieces to a plastic bowl, cleaned up the lab and wrapped up the session. But before leaving, I set two plastic bowls side by side, one contained clear glass shards from the glass droppers, and the other mixed blue shards from the glass canes. The difference between the two was palpable, aside from the colour, the former glistened, the latter did not. Indeed, the blue glass was dull, un-glass like in its outward appearance.
Name: Reut Ullman
Date and Time:
2017.12.14, 11 am
Location: New YorkSubject: Tufa
Making Glue
Equipment:
Electric plate
Pot
Wooden mixing spoon
Chopsticks
Electronic scale
Beakers
Thermometer
Sieve
Ingredients:
White flour (208 g)
Water (480 g)
The author-practitioner advises the use of colle forte (strong glue) with which to affix grotto ornaments. I followed the instructions provided by Tenzin Dongchung in her fieldnotes on Stucco. I set the electric plate on ‘minimum’, and heated 480 g of water in a pot, for a few minutes. Tenzin indicated that the water is supposed to be warm, and after a few minutes the temperature measured at 63 C. Using a sieve, I slowly sprinkle flour into the pot, stopping after a few shakes of my hand, to mix the flour with water. Tenzin indicated that her team had poured too much flour too fast, and the mixture was lumpy. I thus tempered my flour additions, and made sure to mix well before making anymore. After having emptied about half of the 208 g of flour, I saw that the mixture resembled the qualitative descriptions reported by Tenzin. It was “glue-like. Gloopy, sticky, and not too dense, but not watery either. It dripped down from the spoon, but not too easily.” Once my mixture met the descriptive conditions outlined by Tenzin, I stopped adding flour, removed the prepared glue from the electric plate and set it aside. I ended up using only about 100 g of flour.
Affixing Tufa to grotto walls
Equipment:
Two kitchen knives
Carving tools
Ingredients:
Tufa
The tufa rocks arrived in two large lumps. On being held, the outer layer felt flaky and tiny lumps coating it came apart on the softest brush against the palm of my hand. Yet the tufa rock was only deceptively brittle. I had attempted to break it apart with my hands, and was wholly unsuccessful. I then decided to use a small utility knife, but the knife just lodged into the tufa, and would not budge. I traded it for a kitchen knife, and that seemed to do the trick, but the cutting was still laborious. It took at least 10 minutes of deliberate cutting to finally break the tufa rock into two. Once it broke into two, I observed that its inner core resembled the description provided by Vasari, of appearing “sponge-like.” (Vasari, On technique, 88). I then cut the two lumps further, which yielded five lumps in total, of varying sizes.
Using the glue prepared earlier, I inserted a chopstick into the glue pot, and scooped out about 1/3 of teaspoon of glue, and proceeded to lay it on cut parts of the tufa rock, as the surface was straighter and would likely stick better to the linen walls of the grotto. The rocks all stuck with ease. On gluing, I applied pressure to each rock for no more than 20-30 seconds, and it did not seem to require much pressure time anyway. I attached the tufa vertically, and did not lay the wooden grotto on its side for drying. It had stood upright the entire time, and when I returned to the lab several days later, I found the tufa still perfectly well glued on to the grotto walls.
ASPECTS TO KEEP IN MIND WHEN MAKING FIELD NOTES
- note time
- note (changing) conditions in the room
- note temperature of ingredients to be processed (e.g. cold from fridge, room temperature etc.)
- document materials, equipment, and processes in writing and with photographs
- notes on ingredients and equipment (where did you get them? issues of authenticity)
- note precisely the scales and temperatures you used (please indicate how you interpreted imprecise recipe instruction)
- see also our informal template for recipe reconstructions