Velvets in Renaissance Europe: Making Consumerist Cultures, 1400-1700

Examining the material, societal, and economic significance of velvets in Italy, France, and the Czech lands of the Holy Roman Empire between 1400 and 1700, this PhD project presents a comparative study of courts and cities as centres of the production and consumption of velvets. The early modern period has been defined as "the cloth age" (Lemire 2017:32), thus, a period in which textile production dominated economic productivity. Since textile production and trade re-shaped consumerist cultures around the early modern world (Peck 2013), this project's main research question is to ask:

- How did silk fibres-a new fibre with stunning material properties (shine, softness, elasticity)-stimulate entrepreneurial creativity and drive technological innovation that fundamentally re-shaped Renaissance European societies and economies?

i. Investigating velvet-making as Renaissance economic creativity

The introduction of silk fibres to European markets meant the arrival of a serious competitor to locally produced, coarse wool and linen textiles. This change in availability created novel desires for soft and shiny materials (Monnas 2012; Schäfer/Riello/Molà 2018). Historians have yet to explain how such desires drove technological and societal innovation. Whilst the story of how cotton "made the modern world" is well known (Riello 2013), the story of how velvets reshaped the early modern world is still to be explored. Some of the supplementary research questions pertinent to this project are:

- How did craftspeople invent complex technologies of silk and velvet-weaving that demanded new forms of making and knowing, and new forms of labour specialisation and organisation?
- How did new consumerist desires for velvets stimulate economic change that reshaped social hierarchies?
- How did shiny velvets materialize Renaissance identities (Rublack 2010)?

ii. Examining velvet-making as Renaissance material proficiency

Taking a distinctively material approach that combines in-depth archival research with the study of actual artefacts through the use of new scientific technology, this PhD project will explore what it actually meant to make, trade, wear, see, touch, process, and admire velvets. In the "material Renaissance" (Rublack 2013), makers and consumers experimented with materials and their meanings. It is therefore crucial to examine Renaissance velvet-making as forms of material experimentation that led to new experiences and expertise. This PhD project will examine how making and material proficiency interacted with sensorialities when shaping Renaissance experiences associated with velvets. Important research questions here include:

- How and why did Renaissance velvet makers foreground specific material properties such as shine, light, and softness? To what extent did these material properties align with early modern conceptions of divinity and just rulership?
- How and why did velvet merchants praise such qualities in their sales strategies?

iii. Evaluating the consumption of velvets at courts and in cities

A comparative approach fills a pressing gap in research that has mainly focused on the Venetian silk industry to date (Molà 2000). Following Welch's argument that courts and cities drove consumption on various social levels, this PhD project will present the first comparative history of the consumption of velvets in Renaissance Europe. The project will examine a rich set of documentary evidence focused on Czech, French and Italian velvet weavers, merchants, and their customers to analyse their production, trade and sales networks. Comparing Venice with Mantua, Marseille with Paris, Bohemian cities with Prague, the PhD will draw on guild records (statutes, apprenticeship regulations), business records (correspondence, account books), and private documentation (e.g. inventories, correspondence) related to Renaissance cities and courts that were leading producers and consumers of velvets.