Workshops, Sessions and Colloquia

Hands-on Workshops in the ArtLab (Utrecht University)

9-10 April 2026: Water Marks. Water as material in the making of culture (in collaboration with University of Hull)

15 Mai 2025: Erasing Lasting Letters. Remaking Premodern Recipes for Durable Inks.

11 October 2024: Re-Making Angel Water (With Geheugen van Geur Project)

Making Carbon: A Materials Workshop Series on Durability (2022 – 2024)

We are organizing a series of hands-on workshops that will bring together humanists, scientists, and artists to bridge conversations about “sustainability” and “durability” across disciplines. These workshops will center on the broad theme of “Making Carbon,” and each will explore a separate set of materials: 1) “Mushrooming Plastics”; 2) “Dyes That Last?”; and, 3) “Casting with Clays and Futuring with Fossils.” This project is in collaboration with the Material CoLABoratory Project (funded by the Utrecht Young Academy) and all workshops were organized in the ArtLab. For more info, please click here.

Workshop 1: September 13-14, 2022: Workshop ‘Mushrooming Plastics’ (Utrecht University Artlab)

Workshop 2: December 14-15, 2022: Workshop ‘Dyes that Last?’ (Utrecht University Artlab)

Workshop 3: July 11, 2023: ‘Bring Your Own Soil’ (Utrecht University Artlab)

Workshop 4: August 28-29, 2024: Speculation under Lab Conditions (Utrecht University Artlab)

September 8, 2022 : Workshop ‘OSK Sectiedag Atelierpraktijken en Geschiedenis van de Kunstproducten’

During this workshop we reconstructed historical paints and explored how and when they discoloured. For more info click here.

June 7 – 11, 2022: ‘Gold & Mercury’ Workshop

The DURARE team hosted a hands-on workshop for the Lorentz Center symposium, “Gold & Mercury | Metals in Transit” to explore medieval mordant gilding. We divided into three teams to reconstruct three different mordants composed of saffron, eggs, almond gum, and more! These ingredients were used to gild cloth and wooden panels with gold leaf.

May 16 and May 24, 2022: ‘Glue’ Workshop 2 & 3

Historian Ariane Fennetaux from Université Denis Diderot (Paris) joined us to explore 15th-century glue recipes for repairing parchment and paper with breadcrumbs and flour! For photos and more details, check out our Instagram story. Follow @ArianeFennetaux on Twitter.

March 21, 2022: ‘Geheugen van Geur’ Workshop 3

Read the article in the Volkskrant about this project.

July 29, 2021: ‘Geheugen van Geur’ Workshop 2

July 23, 2021: ‘Geheugen van Geur’ Workshop 1

February 23, 2022: ‘Glue’ Workshop 

Sessions and Conferences (selection)

CIHA session by Marjolijn

Decolonizing Materials. Session organized by Grace Kim-Butler and Veronica Peselmann. Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art (CIHA) 36th World Congress, Lyon, France. June 2024.

Changing Colour: Yellow Dyes from Antiquity to Early Modernity, Session at History of Science Society, Portland (9-12 November 2023, co-organized with Jennifer Rampling, and Lucia Raggetti).

Beyond the Gloss: The Multi-sensory Experience of Eighteenth-Century Varnishes. panel at 16th Congress of the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ISECS), Rome (3-7 July 2023, co-organized with Érika Wicky).