clothing, fashion, dress, and costume in venice 903
an unprecedented increase in two-way cultural exchanges of knowledge
that traveled to and fro with europeans into unknown areas around the
globe—from West africa to india, China, and Japan in the east, to the
americas in the west. new settlers brought with them the most recent
technological inventions in the production of cloth and returned to
europe with a more broadly based knowledge of customs of dress.42
Silk Industry in Venice
a specialized silk processing industry first formed in Venice during the 13th
century. in the 14th century, the Venetian senate reacted with flexibility
to the decline in the levantine silk market when it approved the integra-
tion of foreign artisanal and manufacturing knowledge about processes
and products with what was at that time an underdeveloped manufactur-
ing know-how in Venice. a permanent settlement of foreign craftsmen
brought with them critical technological expertise in textile production.
in addition, lucchese silks were produced by lucchese silk workers living
in Venice who had fled their city because of growing political unrest.43
on a daily basis, unfinished fabrics and the raw materials used to make
cloth arrived in Venice from all around the world. By the 15th century,
the Venetian mainland became the main producer of raw silk for north-
ern and central italy.44 raw silk was imported from the middle east and
was refined and finished by spinners ( filatoi ), warpers (ordiresse), dyers
(tentori), and weavers (testori). using the putting-out system, the entrepre-
neurial silk merchant also became involved in collecting mulberry leaves
and raising silk worms, reeling, spinning and throwing, boiling and dyeing,
42 lisa Jardine, Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance (london, 1996),
pp. 3–90; rosamond e. mack, Bazaar to Piazza: Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300–1600
(Berkeley, 2002); michelle o’malley and evelyn Welch, eds., The Material Renaissance:
costs and consumption in Italy, 1400–1650 (manchester/new York, 2007); Patricia Fortini
Brown, “Behind the Walls: the material Culture of Venetian elites,” in John Jeffries martin
and Dennis romano, eds., Venice Reconsidered: The History and civilization of an Italian
city-State, 1297–1797 (Baltimore, 2000), pp. 295–338; Brown, Private Lives in Renaissance
Venice: Art, Architecture and the Family (new haven/london, 2004), pp. 86–89.
43 molà, The Silk Industry, pp. 43–51, 144–47, 218–19; luca molà, La communita’ dei Luc-
chesi a Venezia (Venice, 1994); lanaro, At the centre of the Old World, p. 42; and andrea
mozzato, “the Production of Woolens in Fifteenth-and sixteenth-Century Venice,” in
lanaro, ed., At the centre of the Old World, p. 86.
44 Doretta Davanzo Poli, “l’arte e il mestiere della tessitura,” in I mestieri della moda a
Venezia, dal XIII al XVIII secolo: The crafts of the Venetian Fashion Industry from the Thir-
teenth to the Eighteenth century (Venice, 1995); Crouzet-Pavan, Venice Triumphant, p. 177;
molà, The Silk Industry, pp. 94–95, 222–26, 232–35, 237–41, 243–45.