Research Catalog

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

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]
  • ©2017

Items in the Library & Off-site

Filter by

1 Item

StatusFormatAccessCall NumberItem Location
TextUse in library HD9922.8.P37F37 2017Off-site

Details

Description
vi, 354 pages : illustrations; 24 cm.
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
  • France > Paris
  • Immigrants > Paris > History > To 1500
  • Immigrants
  • Silk industry > Paris > History > To 1500
  • Silk industry
  • Silk manufacturers > Paris > History > To 1500
  • Silk manufacturers
  • To 1500
  • Women employees > Paris > History > To 1500
  • Women employees
Genre/Form
History.
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references (pages 327-345) and index.
Call Number
HD9922.8.P37
ISBN
  • 9780812248487
  • 0812248481
LCCN
2016026334
Owning Institutions
Princeton University Library