The very word Renaissance brings to mind the spirit of adventure—scholars and scientists seeking truth; men of action sailing unknown seas and finding new worlds; the development of the printing press that was to bring books out of the studies of monasteries and palaces and into the homes or ordinary men and women; painters such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo; writers such as Shakespeare and Marlowe.

It is not the giants of the Renaissance that Christine Price treats in this delightful successor to her distinguished Made in the Middle Ages, which the American Library Association designated as one of the notable books for children published in 1961—it is the craftsmen who printed the books, wove the cloth, designed the nautical and musical instruments, carved the furniture, made the maps, goblets and tableware, and worked precious metals into the jewelry and bibelots so loved by the wealthy princes and merchants of this lavish era.

The armor of Renaissance princes was as splendid as their dress. Painters, sculptors, and goldsmiths shared in its design and decoration. Like clothes and armor, the great houses of the Renaissance were designed to display the wealth and power of their owners. No longer the grim fortresses of the Middle Ages, the houses of the sixteenth century were set in charming parks, and protective moats gave way to pleasant stretches of water where the owners and their guests enjoyed boating.

One of the greatest gifts of the Renaissance was the invention of printing. The master printers, such as Aldus Manutius and Philip Pigouchet, were craftsmen of the highest order. The pages of their books delight us today in museums and libraries as much as they did their fortunate owners in the sixteenth century.

How proud the shipwrights must have been as their ships set sail for the New World, the Far East, or the icy seas of the North. The artists and craftsmen of those days were explorers too. They cast off old ideas and old ways of working and pressed forward to the new. As we look today at the beautiful work of the Renaissance craftsmen that Christine Price captures so well in these lovely pages, we can catch a breath of their of spirit of adventure and a glimpse of the exciting time in which they lived—the Age of Exploration, when the world was widened far beyond the boldest dreams of the explorers.

From the dust jacket