Research Catalog

Title

The silk industries of medieval Paris : artisanal migration, technological innovation, and gendered experience / Sharon Farmer.

Author

Farmer, Sharon A.

Publication

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2017]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

vi, 354 pages : illustrations; 24.

Summary

For more than one hundred years, from the last decade of the thirteenth century to the late fourteenth, Paris was the only western European town north of the Mediterranean basin to produce luxury silk cloth. What was the nature of the Parisian silk industry? How did it get there? And what do the answers to these questions tell us? According to Sharon Farmer, the key to the manufacture of silk lies not just with the availability and importation of raw materials but with the importation of labor as well. Farmer demonstrates the essential role that skilled Mediterranean immigrants played in the formation of Paris's population and in its emergence as a major center of luxury production. She highlights the unique opportunities that silk production offered to women and the rise of women entrepreneurs in Paris to the very pinnacles of their profession. The Silk Industries of Medieval Paris illuminates aspects of intercultural and interreligious interactions that took place in silk workshops and in the homes and businesses of Jewish and Italian pawnbrokers. Drawing on the evidence of tax assessments, aristocratic account books, and guild statutes, Farmer explores the economic and technological contributions that Mediterranean immigrants made to Parisian society, adding new perspectives to our understanding of medieval French history, luxury trade, and gendered work.

Series Statement

The Middle Ages series

Uniform Title

Middle Ages series.

Subject

• To 1500
• Silk industry > France > Paris > History > To 1500
• Silk manufacturers > France > Paris > History > To 1500
• Immigrants > France > Paris > History > To 1500
• Women employees > France > Paris > History > To 1500
• Immigrants
• Silk industry
• Silk manufacturers
• Women employees
• France > Paris

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Paris, city of immigrants -- From Persian cocoon to Soie de Paris : trade networks and silk techniques -- Immigrant mercers and silk workers -- Gender, work, and the Parisian silk industry -- Jews, foreign lombards, and Parisian silk women.

Call Number

JFE 19-4469

ISBN

• 9780812248487
• 0812248481

LCCN

2016026334

OCLC

945949984

Author

Farmer, Sharon A., author.

Title

The silk industries of medieval Paris : artisanal migration, technological innovation, and gendered experience / Sharon Farmer.

Publisher

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2017]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

The Middle Ages series

Middle Ages series.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Chronological Term

To 1500

Research Call Number

JFE 19-4469