308 edoardo demo
dobloni, capisoli, and bavellini worked in Bergamo. In any case, weaving in
the terraferma would remain, even up through the 18th century, a mainly
secondary activity when compared with the production of raw silk and
throwing/spinning.36
Vicenza was the only significant exception to the rule, a city in which,
during the 18th century, the development of an important weaving opera-
tion provided work for at least 800–900 looms, a scale nearly comparable
to that of the capital. In any case, this production was not geared to fur-
nish materials of particular quality. rather, the various enterprises operat-
ing in the city offered cloth of medium to low quality at affordable prices,
proving very successful in the austrian and east-central German markets,
though there is also evidence of the presence of silk fabrics from Vicenza
in the atlantic ports of cadiz and Lisbon, from which they were presum-
ably loaded onto ships destined for south america.37
Finally, the making of braids, ribbons, and tassels which took root par-
ticularly in padua and its territory during the course of the 17th century
(and would continue until the fall of the republic and beyond) was of no
little importance. though it employed, all things considered, only mod-
est quantities of semifinished goods (in the central decades of the 17th
century, 30,000–50,000 pounds of spun silk together with flax and other
fibers), the production of braids employed thousands of female workers
operating out of their homes and provided investment opportunities for
dozens of merchants who exported their product to Munich, Vienna, Graz,
and regensburg via the fairs in Bolzano. despite a lack of revolutionary
technical innovations, this sector demonstrated the ability to survive sev-
eral periods of crisis and represents a particularly interesting case of early
modern rural manufactures in the Veneto since it developed outside of
the area best known for its proto-industrial vocation, the foothill belt.38
Given what has been said in the previous paragraphs, it is evident that
the primary characteristic of urban silk production in the early modern
Venetian terraferma was the production of raw silk and semifinished silk
goods, while the working of finished silk fabrics occupied a role that, while
not necessarily marginal, was certainly of secondary importance. In light
36 Molà, the Silk Industry of renaissance Venice, pp. 261–98; Vianello, Seta fine e panni
grossi, pp. 101–04.
37 Walter panciera, “La formazione delle specializzazioni economiche territoriali nel
sei e settecento,” in Giovanni Luigi Fontana, ed., L’industria vicentina dal medioevo a oggi
(padua, 2004), pp. 281–90.
38 caracausi, Nastri, nastrini, cordelle.