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This open access book examines how Piedmont, in early modern Italy, developed silk production into a distinctive system of technological and social innovation. It explores the ways in which this fragile yet economically significant material shaped regional strategies of adaptation and growth, linking local expertise to the expanding networks of global trade. Across ten chapters, the author traces the evolution of a complex production ecosystem, from small workshops to royal manufactories, and considers how technology, policy, and labour interacted to sustain the silk economy. Particular attention is given to the contributions of women, migrants, and apprentices, whose work underpinned both the aesthetics of fashion and the practical mechanisms of manufacture. As political and economic transformations unfolded across eighteenth-century Europe, silk became a lens through which to examine tensions between tradition and change, and between vulnerability and resilience. By situating Piedmont within broader European processes, the book demonstrates that innovation emerged not solely from institutional or technological breakthroughs, but from the craft of making, the capacity to adapt, and the steady labour of human hands.
List of contents
- Introduction.- 2. The Italian Silk Road and the Piedmontese Backwardness.- 3. Techniques and Technologies.- 4. State and the Guilds.- 5. Mercantile Capitalism.- 6. Silk Work and Silk Workers.- 7. A City at the Service of Industry.- 8. External Pressures.- 9. Broken Dreams.
About the author
Mario Grassi is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Padua, Italy, in collaboration with Yale University, the Université Lumière Lyon 2, and the Como Silk Museum. His current research, in addition to the socio-economic history of the silk industry, focuses on labour history, the history of migration, gender, violence, and material culture.
Summary
This open access book examines how Piedmont, in early modern Italy, developed silk production into a distinctive system of technological and social innovation. It explores the ways in which this fragile yet economically significant material shaped regional strategies of adaptation and growth, linking local expertise to the expanding networks of global trade. Across ten chapters, the author traces the evolution of a complex production ecosystem, from small workshops to royal manufactories, and considers how technology, policy, and labour interacted to sustain the silk economy. Particular attention is given to the contributions of women, migrants, and apprentices, whose work underpinned both the aesthetics of fashion and the practical mechanisms of manufacture. As political and economic transformations unfolded across eighteenth-century Europe, silk became a lens through which to examine tensions between tradition and change, and between vulnerability and resilience. By situating Piedmont within broader European processes, the book demonstrates that innovation emerged not solely from institutional or technological breakthroughs, but from the craft of making, the capacity to adapt, and the steady labour of human hands.
