How does a Forger find an objects "history"?

[hula]

Like, how are they able to find out what quarry rock came from, or- that someone locked in this room did this instead of this... I imagine a good "educated guess" could help with a lot of it, and maybe a little trial and error, but- what about items that they've never come across before?

[Spoolofwhool]

24 minutes ago, hula said:

Like, how are they able to find out what quarry rock came from, or- that someone locked in this room did this instead of this... I imagine a good "educated guess" could help with a lot of it, and maybe a little trial and error, but- what about items that they've never come across before?

They can't do anything about items they don't know about other than making random guesses and seeing what sticks. Everything else is about research, general background knowledge, experience and educated guesses. We are shown this by Shai during the book at times, such as how she figures out where the table was from so that she could forge it. My thoughts are that when she was in the cell, she could identify the stones of the wall, then because of her knowledge of where different stones are found and the respective quarries, could make appropriate changes. 

Edited November 8, 2016 by Spoolofwhool

[borkson]

Yeah the whole idea of finding the history is interesting. Do they connect to the object? Search out the history? Or is it just educated guesswork. I think that there is a large portion of the 'history finding' that involves just plain old reasearch. Google would be so nice for Forgers.

On 11/7/2016 at 5:24 PM, Spoolofwhool said:

My thoughts are that when she was in the cell, she could identify the stones of the wall, then because of her knowledge of where different stones are found and the respective quarries, could make appropriate changes. 

I also agree with that, because in TES it talks about the training she had to go through, and how learning quarries was one of the first things she did.