JF Ptak Science Books    Post 2058  
 
 

The great Jost Amman (1533-1591, Swiss book illustrator and one of the last major production artists working with woodcuts) didn’t set out to create a simple alphabet of trades, but did  record them, and did so with great clarity, basically creating a 16th-century pre-photographic “snapshot” of the ways in which people conducted their business and livelihood.  The illustrations come from his work with Hans Sachs,  Eygentliche Beschreibung Aller Staende Auff Erden, published in  Frankfurt am Main in 1568 (the full text here from Bibliothek des Seminars für Wirtschafts- und
Sozialgeschichte, and another useful full-text here that indexes the images and another here for an English indexing of the trades). The images are precise and sparse, and endlessly interesting, an  uncommon peep into the common past that was n

Also useful: Dictionary of Medieval and Renaissance occupation, here.

A.  Apothecary