ABSTRACT

This chapter examines Johann Neudorffer’s treatment of artisans as central to the city and his text as revelatory of artisanal processes within the city. In 1547, the Nuremberg calligrapher and mathematician Neudorffer wrote an account of the lives of seventy-nine of the city’s most eminent artisans, and sent them to the merchant Georg Romer. Neudorffer’s text functioned as a claim to a particular kind of civic identity based not on political prominence or economic importance, but on artisanal practice. Artisans, Neudorffer suggested, were the central makers of civic epistemology. Artisanal knowledge was material and mutable, and this lent itself to a worldview which prioritized questions of change. ‘How’ was more important than ‘what’ for knowledge of the natural world. The Verzeichnis is an especially valuable source for those interested in artisanal epistemologies, and the role of such epistemologies in shaping the city. Neudorffer was sensitive to the importance of the household as both an artisanal and civic space.