Wastework: Early Modern Stories from the Cutting Room Floor

The book offers innovative and interdisciplinary studies about the reuse and value of waste and discards in early modern material culture.

Paper scraps, metal filings, wool shearings... dismantled sets, spoiled rags, animal blood...

How did these ostensibly worthless by-products of art and industry avoid the flames of the kitchen hearth or the sweep of the apprentice’s broom to spark ingenuity, generate new forms, and propel further acts of creation? Wastework moves beyond the well-research...