The Social And Material Life Of Time In The Anglo-Atlantic World, 1660-1830

The Social and Material Life of Time explores how across the Anglo-Atlantic world in diverse makers’ spaces time was too malleable to be understood solely by watching the clock. It argues that in place of an external timekeeper, craftspeople used their senses to read the visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, and tactile signs of material change and process. The scum, froth, and bubbles that emerged as beer fermented, the kaleidoscopic range of color changes that shimmered across the surface of an indigo vat, and the deepening of the green of cucumbers as they pickled – these were the organic ‘signs’ that marked the passage of time in makers’ lives across the Anglo-Atlantic world.