Biography
Jessie Wei-Hsuan Chen is a historian of art, science, and knowledge. She received her PhD in the history of Art, Science, and Technology from Utrecht University in 2023. Her PhD project investigated the production of seventeenth-century florilegia, which are picture books of rare garden flowers, and the different kinds of knowledge required to make them. This research was funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and received the 2020 Stacy Lloyd III Fellowship for Bibliographic Study from the Oak Spring Garden Foundation. Before joining the Huygens Institute, Chen worked as a postdoc at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Brussels and research fellow at the Vossius Center for the History of Humanities and Sciences in Amsterdam.
Chen currently works on a project that focuses on early modern visual strategies people used to depict, represent, visualize, and communicate observations made from using microscopes and other magnifying devices. She has published several pieces that encompass her research interests in image making and the visual and material culture of natural history, including the woodblock making and printing of botanical woodcuts at the early modern Plantin Press in Antwerp. Hands-on research and performative methods, such as historical reconstruction, are instrumental for her work. In addition to being a historian, Chen is a maker of things with a background and training as an illustrator from the Savannah College of Art and Design.
Publications
Book (author)
Chen, Jessie Wei-Hsuan. (Forthcoming). Everlasting Flowers Between the Pages: The Making of Seventeenth-Century Florilegia. Under contract with Brill Publishing. Passed peer review and in final editing.
Contribution to journal (article)
Chen, Jessie Wei-Hsuan. (2020). “A Woodblock’s Career: Transferring Visual Botanical Knowledge in the Early Modern Low Countries.” Nuncius: Journal of the Material and Visual History of Science 35 (1): 20–63.
Chen, Jessie Wei-Hsuan. (2018). “Printing Matrices as a Source: Studying the Botanical Woodblocks at the Museum-Plantin-Moretus.” De Gulden Passer: Journal for Book History 96 (2): 245–259.
Chen, Jessie Wei-Hsuan. (2016 ). “Unpacking the Printed Wunderkammer: Matthäus Merian’s Florilegium Renovatum et Auctum (1641).” Athanor: Florida State University, Department of Art History 34: 51–59.
Contribution to journal (review)
Chen, Jessie Wei-Hsuan. (2024). “Review of Marjolijn Bol and E.C. Spary, eds., The Matter of Mimesis: Studies of Mimesis and Materials in Nature, Art and Science (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2023).” Ambix: The Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry 71 (4): 464–466.
Chen, Jessie Wei-Hsuan. (2022). “Review of Alexander Wragge-Morley, Aesthetic Science: Representing Nature in the Royal Society of London, 1650–1720 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020).” Renaissance Quarterly 75 (1): 241–242.
Chen, Jessie Wei-Hsuan. (2019). “Review of Marisa Anne Bass, Insect Artifice: Nature and Art in the Dutch Revolt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019).” Nuncius: Journal of the Material and Visual History of Science 34 (3): 717–719.
Chen, Jessie Wei-Hsuan. (2019). “Website Review of ‘Time Capsule’.” Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society 110 (4): 796–797.
Contribution to edited volume
Chen, Jessie Wei-Hsuan. (2025). “Remaking Sixteenth-Century Botanical Woodblocks: Process and Reflection on the Embodied and Artisanal Knowledge in Early Modern Woodcutting.” In Embodied Experiences of Making in Early Modern Europe: The Body, Gender, and Material Culture, edited by Sarah A. Bendall and Serena Dyer, 163–184. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Chen, Jessie Wei-Hsuan. (2022). “Before Black There Was Red: The Black Woodblock of a Madder Illustration for the Herbals of the Mechelen Botanist Rembert Dodoens (1517–1585).” In Burgundian Black, edited by Jenny Boulboullé and Sven Dupré. Santa Barbara: EMC Imprint.
Contribution to edited volume (popular, Collection/Exhibition Entries)
Chen, Jessie Wei-Hsuan. (2023). “Kiekjes van kaasjeskruid” (Translated into Dutch by Esther van Gelder). In Flora Batava 1800–1934: De wilde planten van Nederland, edited by Esther van Gelder and Norbert Peeters. Tielt: Lannoo, 124.
Chen, Jessie Wei-Hsuan. (2023). “Experimenteren met troostrijk geel” (Translated into Dutch by Esther van Gelder). In Flora Batava 1800–1934: De wilde planten van Nederland, edited by Esther van Gelder and Norbert Peeters. Tielt: Lannoo, 176.
Chen, Jessie Wei-Hsuan. (2020). “A millefleurs of herbal illustrations.” (Also translated into French by Renaud Adam). In A century of typographical excellence: Christophe Plantin & the Officina Plantiniana (1555–1655), edited by Goran Proot and Yann Sordet, and Christophe Vellet. Paris: Bibliothèque Mazarine / Cultura Fonds Library / Editions des Cendres, 330–335.
Online publications
Chen, Jessie Wei-Hsuan. (2020). “Mattioli Woodblocks in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection.” Margaret Mee: Portraits of Plants (On Site 24 March–23 August 2020 and Online), Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.
Chen, Jessie Wei-Hsuan. (2020). “Making Colours, Sensing Microscopic Records: Jessie Wei-Hsuan Chen on Senses and Skills in Historical Remaking.” Microscopic Records Project (published 29 June 2020).
Chen, Jessie Wei-Hsuan. (2019). “Des livres de fleurs peintes sur papier et parchemin: repenser le florilège?” (Translated into French by Katell Lavéant). Société bibliographique de France (published 21 September 2019).
Chen, Jessie Wei-Hsuan. (2019). “Learning from a ‘Living Source’ in Working with Historical Recipes: Reflections on the Burgundian Blacks Collaboratory.” ARTECHNE Project / The Recipes Project. Version published 3 July 2019 or version published 15 October 2019.
Chen, Jessie Wei-Hsuan. (2019). “Interpreting the Ragged Edges: The Danger of Being a Modern Image-Maker in Historical Research.” ARTECHNE Project. (published 3 April 2019).
Chen, Jessie Wei-Hsuan, and Andrea van Leerdam. (2017). “Densely Annotated and Richly Illustrated: A Famous Herbal in Dutch Translation.” (Also translated into Dutch by Van Leerdam.) Utrecht University Library, Special Collections.
Chen, Jessie Wei-Hsuan, and Andrea van Leerdam. (2017). “A Renaissance Herbal Owned by a Noble Lady.” (Also translated into Dutch by Van Leerdam.) Utrecht University Library, Special Collections.
Chen, Jessie Wei-Hsuan, and Andrea van Leerdam. (2017). “Healthy Herbs in Print.” (Also translated into Dutch by Van Leerdam.) Utrecht University Library, Special Collections.