Late medieval and early modern cities are often depicted as cradles of artistic creativity and hotbeds of new material culture. Cities in renaissance Italy and in seventeenth and eighteenth-century northwestern Europe are the most obvious cases in point. But, how did this come about? Why did cities rather than rural environments produce new artistic genres, new products and new techniques? How did pre-industrial cities evolve into centres of innovation and creativity? As the most urbanized regions of continental Europe in this period, Italy and the Low Countries provide a rich source of case studies, as the contributors to this volume demonstrate. They set out to examine the relationship between institutional arrangements and regulatory mechanisms such as citizenship and guild rules and innovation and creativity in late medieval and early modern cities. They analyze whether, in what context and why regulation or deregulation influenced innovation and creativity, and what the impact was of long-term changes in the political and economic sphere.
Author(s): Karel Davids, Bert De Munck
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2014
Language: English
Pages: 438
City: London
Cover
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Notes on Contributors
Preface
1 Innovation and Creativity in Late Medieval and Early Modern European Cities: an Introduction
2 The Cities of Glass: Privileges and Innovations in Early Modern Europe
3 Craft Guild Legislation and Woollen Production: the Florentine Arte della Lana
4 New Products and Technological Innovation in the Silk Industry of Vicenza
5 To Kill Two Birds with One Stone: Keeping Immigrants in by Granting Free Burghership in Early Modern Antwerp
6 The Secret Perfume: Technology and the Organization of Soap Production in Northern Italy
7 Textiles Manufacturing, Product Innovations and Transfers of Technology in Padua and Venice
8 The Spatial Side of Innovation: the Local Organization of Cultural Production in the Dutch Republic
9 Beyond Exclusivism: Entrance Fees for Guilds in the Early Modern Low Countries
10 The Coopers’ Guilds in Holland, c. 1650–1720: a Market Logic?
11 The Early Modern Antwerp Coopers’ Guild: from a Contract-enforcing Organization to an Empty Box?
12 The Paradox of the Antwerp Rose: Symbol of Decline or Token of Craftsmanship?
13 Harbouring Urban Creativity: the Antwerp Art Academy in the Tension
14 Innovation in the Capital City: Central Policies, Markets and Migrant Skills in Neapolitan Ceramic Manufacturing
15 Innovations, Growth and Mobility in the Secondary Sector of Trieste
Bibliography
Index
