Schelp of verfschelp c. 1590 - 1596

This is a small, anonymous paint shell, currently held in the collection of the Rijksmuseum. Objects like this shell remind us of the physical and material conditions of art production. In the absence of tubes, palettes, and other industrially produced tools, paint had to be mixed on site, often using whatever materials were available. This shell shows the residue of that mixing. While we don't know much about this particular example, we can imagine it as part of the working process in a Dutch Golden Age studio, perhaps used by a master such as Rembrandt or Vermeer or by one of their pupils. Objects such as this can tell us a lot about the everyday conditions of artistic labor. It suggests that a lot of the supposedly 'creative' work in art involves mundane and repetitive processes. Historians are now working to understand the labor processes behind art in a more nuanced way. Museum collections are one important resource for this task, but so too are archival records like inventories and workshop accounts.