The Silk Industries of Medieval Paris

For more than one hundred years, from the last decade of the thirteenth century to the late fourteenth, Paris was the only western European town north of the Mediterranean basin to produce luxury silk cloth. What was the nature of the Parisian silk industry? How did it get there? And what do the answers to these questions tell us?

According to Sharon Farmer, the key to the manufacture of silk lies not just with the availability and importation of raw materials but with the importation of labor as well. Farmer demonstrates the essential role that skilled Mediterranean immigrants played in the formation of Paris's population and in its emergence as a major center of luxury production. She highlights the unique opportunities that silk production offered to women and the rise of women entrepreneurs in Paris to the very pinnacles of their profession. The Silk Industries of Medieval Paris illuminates aspects of intercultural and interreligious interactions that took place in silk workshops and in the homes and businesses of Jewish and Italian pawnbrokers.

Drawing on the evidence of tax assessments, aristocratic account books, and guild statutes, Farmer explores the economic and technological contributions that Mediterranean immigrants made to Parisian society, adding new perspectives to our understanding of medieval French history, luxury trade, and gendered work.

"Sharon Farmer explains why it is important to study the silk industries of medieval Paris, discussing arguments and ideas that are not only inspiring for aficionados of Parisian silk, but also for social and economic historians of the late Middle Ages."

"This splendid book is a model of history and technical writing. Its author, a highly respected historian and scholar of textile technologies, seeks to verify the long-surmised existence of a silk industry in medieval Paris . . . This book is a masterpiece of historical research and accessible information. It should be read by the medievalist, textile technologist, and museum curator alike."