Connecting people, Trade and Orders of Knowledge: Mediality and Intermediality of Early Modern Auction Catalogues

Abstract

Auction catalogues are considered a key source in different fields of historical research and are exploited both by traditional scholarship as well as more recent, digital, big data approaches regarding the information supplied on the offered objects (books, art works, or other trade goods). By focusing on auction catalogues as objects, their properties and uses, this contribution seeks to unveil its potential for scholarship on trade, the history of knowledge and, in the case of interleaved copies, early modern note taking practices, in their links to interaction. Indeed, it argues, auction catalogues played a pivotal, productive role, as they facilitated social interaction und advanced knowledge. Moving beyond a data harvesting approach, it opens up a new praxeological perspective on auction catalogues.