The ARTECHNE research database contains fully searchable digitized sources on artisanal techniques, such as recipes, books of secrets, and artist handbooks, from the period 1500-1900, in Latin, Dutch, German, English, French, Italian and Spanish.

The database was developed as part of the ARTECHNE research project. What is ‘technique’ in the visual and decorative arts? And how is ‘technique’ transmitted? Those were the central questions of ARTECHNE. This five-year project (2015-2020) is supported by the European Research Council, and led by Sven Dupré at Utrecht University and the University of Amsterdam. The database was primarily a tool for the ARTECHNE researchers to digitally store, compare, and analyze their textual sources and reconstruction experiments. As these sources are also potentially useful for other researchers, we have made the database public. Feel free to browse and use the database, but please credit us if you want to refer to our sources or use analytic results from the database.