Craft Guilds in Medieval and Early Modern Europe Research Papers (original) (raw)

This article focuses on the process of creating group identity in two transport workers' guilds in mid fifteenth-century Riga, demonstrating the role of donations, discipline and commemoration in constituting both groups. The Beer Carters' and Porters' guilds experienced a 'new beginning' at this time: new resources had to be attracted, new traditions created and internal hierarchies established. Donations were an important element that helped these groups to establish their own spaces of pietyto create altars and chapelsand also to acquire resources for the celebration of communal meals. At both liturgical services and communal meals groups commemorated their deceased members, thus strengthening their identities. In the Hanseatic cities there was a bond between transport workers and merchants; in Riga as well, merchants became members of the two guilds, became involved in the processes of creating group identity, made endowments and helped the guilds gain status.

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- Commemoration and Memory, Gift Giving (Economic Anthropology), Social History, Discipline

This article explores the composition of Utrecht’s city government after the introduction of the guild ordinance of 1304, and the representation of craft guilds and socioeconomic interests in local government, in particular. For the analysis, the yearly lists of magistrates between 1402 (the year in which they first appear) and 1459 are used. It is argued that a relatively stable system of power distribution between the 21 ‘common guilds’ (the political guilds) developed in Utrecht before the fifteenth century. This system or ‘guild hierarchy’ worked to the advantage of the more well-off merchants, retailers and producers of luxury goods, active in (inter)regional markets, and to the disadvantage of craftsmen and retailers who were primarily active in the local market. At the same time, it is argued that a relatively small ruling elite, similar to those of neighbouring ‘oligarchic’ towns, emerged in Utrecht within the framework of guild government. Even though the factual power distribution in the city government thus undermined the representative
character of the city government, the constitutional framework of open elections and representation from the guilds, as well as occasional consultation of the guild membership, remained largely intact.

- by The Australian Early Medieval Association Inc and +1
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- Early Music, Medieval Philosophy, Medieval History, Medieval Studies
- by Anna Welch
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- Book History, History of the Book, Medieval Studies, Printing History

Στην εργασία γίνεται μια προσπάθεια να παρουσιαστεί η θέση της γυναίκας στις συντεχνίες της πρώιμης νεότερης Ευρώπης. Να διευκρινιστούν τα εμπόδια που συνάντησαν και τους όρους με τους οποίους εντάσσονταν σε αυτές καθώς και τους οικονομικούς και κοινωνικούς παράγοντες που δικαιολογούσαν τα παραπάνω. Επιχειρώ επίσης να απαντήσω αν στην περίπτωση της συμμετοχής στις συντεχνίες έχουμε στοιχεία χειραφέτησης και αν αντίθετα ο αποκλεισμός από αυτές είναι στοιχείο που προκύπτει από τις πατριαρχικές δομές συγκρότησης της κοινωνίας.

- by Thodoris Nikias
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- Gender Studies, Women's Studies, Women's History, Early Modern History
- by maria paola zanoboni
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- Economic History, Women's Studies, Women's History, Gender History

The focus of this study in occupational mapping is on combining locational data for early modern occupations with a contemporary town plan of Edinburgh, in order to study occupational distribution in the urban environment. Much work has recently been done on the social, economic and occupational structure of burghs, but very little has been done on the physical locations of the various work-types. By combining data from a 1635 tax roll with the corresponding section of the 1647 Gordon of Rothiemay map of Edinburgh, a new tool was formed for visualizing the distribution and physical patterns of urban occupations in the south-east quarter of Scotland’s capital.

- by Aaron Allen
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- Economic History, Early Modern History, Urban History, Urban Planning

The bread supply in Palma (Majorca) during the early modern age, has received little attention from researchers. The main objective of this paper is to show one specific aspect of that process: the bread baking. This essay portrays the way in which, between 1476 and 1520, the Bakers Guild attained the baking monopoly and how the profession defensed this privilege during the second half of the 16th century.

The article is an overview on the relationship between the urban guilds and the popular governments in 13th and 14th c. Siena, mostly seen through the three main civic statutes of 1262, 1309-10 and 1337-39. It offers an up-to-date and revised point of view on medieval guilds in Siena and their role in urban politics. Besides the traditional interpretation of the economic and political weakness of the local guilds and the undeniable coercion exercised by the middleclass merchants regime during the 13th c., the paper aims to encourage new researches on Sienese guilds and workers in the Middle Ages. The inventory of available data and sources offered in these pages will be an essential starting point.

Silk manufacturing began in Lucca in the twelfth century and by the fifteenth century Italy had become the largest producer of silk textiles in Europe, nurtured by extensive domestic and foreign demand for the luxurious fabric. This essay explores the market for silk textiles, the organization of the silk industry, and the role played in it by guilds, entrepreneurs and their capital, and highly sought after artisans. Just as silk manufacturing was an important and lucrative business for entrepreneurs , this article argues, so was it a crucial strategic activity for the governments of Italy's Renaissance states, whose incentives , protections, and investments helped to start up and grow the sector with the aim of generating wealth and strengthening their respective economies.

De masterproef voert een prosopografische studie uit naar de dekens van de Brugse librariërsgilde ca. 1450-1500 en sluit aan bij de tentoonstelling Haute Lecture by Colard Mansion. Die gaat indirect over de librariërs en vormt zo een... more

- by Eef Segers
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- History, Economic History, Art History, Book History

A French woodcarver and metal worker, Andrew Mansioun, who is known for his work for James V of Scotland and Mary of Guise, is also prominent in the minutes of the Edinburgh craft of masons and wrights. In Edinburgh he was involved in the assessment of master pieces made by aspiring craftsmen. His family also joined the craft. It is likely that he was a central figure in Scottish decorative arts of the time, which bear witness to French influences.
Mansioun's work can be related to a 'courtly style' mentioned in contemporary documents, and surviving artefacts including a drawing recently discovered on the reverse of a carved 'Stirling Head' medallion.

On the basis of comparative survey of 326 stone-carver marks, collected on the walls, pillars, and stone fillets of groins in the late Gothic parish church in Sárospatak, the author believes, that around 60 stone-cutters worked for shorter or longer periods at the building of the church between the last decades of the 15th c. and the first third of the 16th c. Some of the lapidary masters possibly took part at the building of another famous Central European Gothic churches, as Kassa (Kosice), Buda, Boroszló (Breslau, Wroclaw), Bécs (Wien), etc., Fig. 122.

La collection de La Petite bibliothèque d'histoire des arts a l'ambition de constituer un nouvel outil à destination des étudiants des cursus d'histoire et d'histoire de l'art des universités comme à destination du grand public souhaitant mieux connaître et comprendre son patrimoine. Ces manuels sont le résultat de plusieurs années d’enseignement de leurs auteurs dans les universités et sont d’abord conçus pour proposer des perspectives nouvelles et synthétiques sur les grandes périodes de l’histoire artistique du continent européen comme des principales civilisations mondiales.
L'art du XVe siècle, dont ce volume inaugure la collection, constitua ainsi une page majeure de notre histoire culturelle. Il est le produit d’un basculement, tel que l’Occident en connut finalement assez peu, et par bien des aspects admirable, entre l’héritage millénaire du Moyen Âge et l’avènement des Temps Modernes. C’est ce récit historique, depuis longtemps établi, que ce manuel prétend remettre sur l’établi en portant un regard renouvelé sur toute la diversité de ses territoires comme les œuvres, les hommes, les formes ou les savoir-faire qui les parcourent. C’est en se rapprochant au plus près du travail réel des acteurs, en replaçant celui-ci au sein des géographies vécues ainsi qu’en prenant en considération les contraintes matérielles ou les enjeux dévotionnels pesant sur lui que l’on pourra proposer un panorama plus complet – car plus incarné – de l’art du dernier siècle du Moyen Âge qui est aussi le premier siècle de la Modernité. Pour accompagner le lecteur dans ces chemins de traverse, une série de commentaires d’œuvres diverses et variées accompagnent ce texte et contribuent à fournir au lecteur les clefs nécessaires à la compréhension de l’une des périodes les plus fascinantes de notre histoire artistique.

Nei secoli XIII-XV il metodo di lavoro del sarto si modifica in relazione a nuove pratiche sociali
connesse al vestiario. Queste ultime si diffondono non solo nelle corti ma anche nelle città, grazie a
una clientela più sensibile al consumo degli abiti divenuti mezzi di distinzione sociale e di lotta di
classe. I sarti, riuniti in corporazioni, si organizzano per far fronte alla richiesta di inediti abiti
aderenti da indossare sotto maestosi abiti sempre più ricercati. L’accresciuta domanda delle vesti
arricchisce le competenze di questi artigiani, che raggiungono un alto livello di specializzazione
divenendo promotori e coordinatori di più attività coinvolte nella produzione dei capi di
abbigliamento. Attraverso informazioni ricavate da fonti scritte, figurative e materiali, il volume
descrive il lavoro del sarto nel tardo Medioevo, mettendone in evidenza il ruolo nell’economia
cittadina, le capacità tecniche e l’apporto creativo.

Through an examination of archived medieval documents, this paper presents evidence for women in guilds and trades in York during the reigns of Edward I through III. I examined digital transcriptions of primary source documents, including the York Register of Freemen and the Ebor Cause Papers, extracting data about female names and occupations. By analyzing these data, I was able to compare my findings to those of other researchers who have written about women as workers in other areas of medieval Europe. Overall, I found that the situation for women in York was consistent with that for women in other medieval European cities: while women did participate (sometimes significantly) in wage-work, women’s participation was typically limited to certain types of jobs in certain industries, and women rarely achieved full guild membership.

- by Laurel Black
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- Medieval History, Women's History, Medieval Studies, Medieval Women

Wrocław formierte sich im 11. und 12. Jahrhundert zum wirtschaftlichen Dreh- und Angelpunkt Schlesiens. Zwei städtische Märkte und die Position an der Hohen Achse machten die Rolle als Umschlagplatz für Waren von Ost nach West möglich. Im Zuge der städtischen
Entwicklung, formierten sich Handwerker verschiedenster Gewerbe in den Suburbien der Stadt. Seit Beginn, aber spätestens zur Mitte des 13. Jahrhunderts war die Organisationsform der Innungen im schlesischen Raum bekannt.
Mit dem Mongoleneinfall 1241 wurde diesem Prozess ein jähes Ende gesetzt, erst mit der Kolonisationsbewegungen aus dem westlichen Europa konnte an den Status von 1240
angeknüpft werden. Im Zuge der Neustrukturierung Wrocławs entstanden Gewerbeverbände. Für diesen Prozess stehen exemplarisch die Kürschner als eine der frühesten Zünfte (1273) der Stadt. Die Zunftgewerbe entwickelten sich in den Gebieten östlich der Elbe ähnlich den gewerblichen Vereinigungen im süddeutschen/westdeutschen Raum.
Die Zünfte hatten für den städtischen Raum eine große Bedeutung, dies zeigt die große Anzahl von
Handwerksgruppen, um 1300 waren es 28 verschiedene Handwerkszweige. Wrocław wurde im Laufe des 14. Jahrhunderts zu einer bedeutenden Handelsstadt - sowohl
die innerstädtische Wirtschaft als auch der Fernhandel florierten. Von dieser Symbiose zwischen „internem“ und „externem“ Handel profitierte das städtische Gewerbe, indem es Waren aus dem Fernhandel bezog, gleichzeitig für den überregionalen Handel produzierte.
Wrocław behielt bis zur Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts seine Bedeutung als Transitstation von Waren aus dem Osten (bis zur Herrschaft der Habsburger 1526-1742), danach kam es zu einer Verschiebung des Warenhandels in den Süden Europas. Nach den Ereignissen des
Dreißigjährigen Krieges konnte sich das produzierende Gewerbe rasch erholen, einzelne Gewerbezweige wie Goldschmiede und Kürschner fertigten Waren für den überregionalen Handel. Mit der preußischen Machtübernahme (ab 1742-1815, danach bis 1915 als „Preußisch Schlesien“) hielt die Protoindustrialisierung Einzug in Schlesien und verdrängte im Zuge der
merkantilistischen Interessenpolitik die Zünfte aus der überregionalen Produktion zu Gunsten günstigerer Massenwaren. Dennoch behielten die produzierenden Gewerbe ihre Bedeutung für den innerstädtischen Raum bis zum Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts.

- by Elisabeth Thoß
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- Economic History, Medieval History, Early Modern History, Medieval Studies

Guilds ruled many European crafts and trades from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution. Each guild regulated entry to its occupation, requiring any practitioner to become a guild member and then limiting admission to the guild. Guilds intervened in the markets for their members’ products, striving to keep prices high, limit output, suppress competition, and block innovations that might disrupt the status quo. Guilds also acted in input markets, seeking to control access to raw materials, keep wages low, hinder employers from competing for workers, and prevent workers from agitating for better conditions. Guilds treated women particularly severely, usually excluding them from apprenticeship and forbidding any female other than a guild member’s widow from running a workshop. Guilds invested large sums in lobbying governments and political elites to grant, maintain, and extend these privileges.
Guilds had the potential to compensate for their cartellistic activities by creating countervailing benefits. Guild quality certification was one possible solution to information asymmetries between producers and consumers, which could have made markets work better. Guild apprenticeship had the potential to solve imperfections in markets for skilled training, and thus to encourage human capital investment. The cartel profits generated by guilds could in theory have encouraged technological innovation by enabling guild masters to appropriate more of the social benefits of their innovations, while guild journeymanship and spatial clustering could diffuse new technical knowledge. A rich scholarship on European guilds makes it possible to assess the degree to which guilds created such benefits, outweighing the harm they caused.
After about 1500, guild strength diverged across Europe, declining gradually in Flanders, the Netherlands, and England, surviving in France and Italy, and intensifying across large tracts of Iberia, Scandinavia, and the German-speaking lands. The activities of guilds contributed to variations across Europe in economic performance, urban growth, and inequality. Guilds interacted significantly with both markets and states, which helps explain why European economies diverged in the crucial centuries before industrialization.

Design sciences are technical or social sciences that focus on how to do things to accomplish goals. Design sciences emerge when skills-based professions move from traditional rules of thumb or trial-and-error methods to the use of theory and scientific method. Many forms of design are at this point now, including graphic design, industrial design, information design and design management. This is visible in an emerging transition from an arts-and-craft approach to a theory-based design. In this time of transition, the theoretical and intellectual content of design education takes on particularly great importance. This article will discuss some of the issues involved in the transition and in the kinds of design education that we require to successfully bridge two eras in the design profession.

- by Ken Friedman
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- Design, Design education, Learning and Teaching, History of Universities

Aquest estudi, dedicat a les confraries barcelonines dels segles XIV, XV i inicis del XVI, busca oferir una visió de conjunt que en presenti l'evolució, així com les característiques genèriques i pròpies. Les confraries són catalogades i classificades en funció de l'edifici on tenien la seu, i tractades individualment, amb un especial èmfasi en el paper que exerciren en el camp de la promoció artística, bàsicament per dotar llurs espais de culte.
This study is dedicated to the brotherhoods of Barcelona in the 14th, 15th and early 16th centuries, and seeks to offer an overview that presents their evolution , as well as their generic and specific characteristics. The brotherhoods are cataloged and classified according to the building where they had their headquarters, and treated individually, with special emphasis on the role they played in the field of artistic promotion, basically to provide their places of worship.

- by Joan Valero
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- Medieval Art, Barcelona, Craft Guilds in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Gothic Art

Accompanying the related exhibition, Leiden circa 1630: Rembrandt Emerges illuminates the early career of Rembrandt and his peers. Essays explore the artists in broader contexts, including Leiden’s historical and cultural profile, process and novelty in printmaking, the city’s art market and the history of collecting paintings by the master in Canada. The four essays, accompanied by entries on the works featured in the exhibition, offer profound insight into the motivations, aspirations and achievements of an extraordinary group of artists.

- by Piet Bakker
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- Economic History, Art History, Social Economy, 17th-Century Studies

Le Moyen Âge est l'époque de la chevalerie, certes, mais pas seulement. Dans la Flandre très urbanisée du XIIIe siècle naissent des milices organisées par les corporations d'artisans. Leur succès va surprendre l'ordre militaire établi - sans toutefois parvenir à le renverser. Ces citadins en campagne n'en annoncent pas moins l'essor de l'infanterie à la fin de la période médiévale.

Tableware made of pewter (mixture of tin and lead) and less often pure tin played a significant role in European history. Both archaeological and written sources confirmed that this metal was widely used since Roman Imperial Period, also to produce vessels. The most spectacular finds from this time were discovered in South England, due to large sources of cassiterite – located in Cornwall – which was exploited till early Modern Period. After lower interest in pewter products in early Middle Ages (tin foil had been used for example to decorate exclusive Tating clay vessels), since 13th – 14th century it became again an important stock, this time for townspeople. Silver tableware was more expensive than pewter objects (plates, jugs, pitchers ect.) and the color similarity made tin even more attractive. 17th – 18th century was the apogee of use pewter vessels in Europe, also a new range of products, such as chocolate pots, coffee pots and teapots; but since the next century social demand for tin slowly declined, especially because of cheap- er materials (stoneware, glass, faiance). Nowadays pewter tableware is mostly forgotten.

- by Jakub Szajt
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- Archaeology, Art History, Medieval Archaeology, Material Culture

This dissertation explores the relationship of clothes and social order in early modern Europe. The period has often been characterised as inert and immobile, with especially middling and poorer people living in a sartorially drab world, but a number of historians have demonstrated that it was also a period of profound material change, with consumer demand, democratisation of fashion and global trade engendering cosmopolitan sensibilities earlier than thought. Based on an examination of seventeenth-century Tallinn, I analyse how social order influenced sartorial expression and how clothes shaped order through affirmation, negotiation and subversion. The interaction between clothes and social order was complex, with both elements acting as moving parts within the ideal. While on the normative level, clothes were thought to have the primary function of visualising order, on the everyday level clothes could often obscure order and complicate the desired visualisation. Through the circulation of clothing as fungible items and as mediators of intricate emotions and social relations, much of clothes’ complexity in the seventeenth century stemmed from their resistance to being anchored to a single function, whether manifesting status, demonstrating appreciation or helping poor people survive. The results arrived at have two key implications. Firstly, Tallinn, while undeniably an unequal and hierarchical society, was hardly static. The inherent dynamism suggests that social order, rather than being considered as an independent structure, should be viewed as negotiable and requiring the participation of people, space and materiality. Secondly, the study problematises the chronology that has a modern consumer society gradually replacing the ancien régime of fashion. Rather than an uncomplicated narrative of progress, I argue that aspects of both systems co-existed in parallel within a society that did not necessarily demonstrate any of the other tendencies assumed by proponents of ‘consumer revolution’.

- by Astrid Wendel-Hansen
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- History of Dress, Seventeenth Century, Swedish History, Material Culture

This article, by surveying the literature, looks at the impact of associational organizations on patterns of wealth inequality in pre-industrial western Europe. It shows how they developed less regressive forms of taxation and redistribution, embedded the transfer and use of land and capital in coordination systems that curtailed accumulation, and sometimes even imposed maximums of wealth ownership, and it tentatively argues that their role had a downward effect on wealth inequality, even despite the exclusive character of these organizations. Tweet This article tentatively argues that associational organizations, by organizing taxation, curtailing accumulation, and imposing maximums on ownership, had a downward effect on wealth inequalities in pre-industrial western Europe, even despite their exclusive character.

- by Valentina Sapienza
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- Labour history, History of Art, Social History, History of music