Cotton in Context: Manufacturing, Marketing, and Consuming Textiles in the German-Speaking World (1500-1900)

Description

While cotton was a world-changing good in the early modern period, for producers, merchants, and consumers, it was but one of many different fabrics. This volume explores this dichotomy by contextualizing cotton within its contemporary culture of textiles. In doing, it focuses on a long, under-researched region: the German-speaking world, particularly Switzerland, which transformed into one of the most prolific European regions for the production of printed cottons in the eighteenth century. Sixteen contributions investigate the (globally entangled) history of Indiennes, silk, wool, and embroideries, giving new insights into the manufacturing, marketing, and consumption of textiles between 1500 and 1900. Inhalt Preface Introduction: Swiss Cotton – A Fabric and its Research Debates • Kim Siebenhüner Fibres, Fashion and Marketing: Textile Innovation in early modern Europe • John Styles Indian Block Printing: Technology, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation Across Time and Place • Eiluned Edwards PART 1 – The Production of Textiles: Manufacturing and Colouring Textile Printing in early modern Augsburg: at the Crossroads of Local and Global Histories of Industry • Karl Borromäus Murr and Michaela Breil Early Textile Printing in Eastern Switzerland and its Forgotten B(l)oom around 1800 • Ernest Menolfi The Art of Making Indienne: Knowing How to Dye in Eighteenth-Century Switzerland • Kim Siebenhüner An Apron’s Tale: Innovative Colours and Fashionable Dress between India and the Swiss Cantons • Claudia Ravazzolo Dyeing Woollens in Eighteenth-Century Berlin: The Königliches Lagerhaus and the Globalisation of Prussia through Colouring Material • Jutta Wimmler PART 2 – The Business of Textiles: Marketing and Product Innovation Portuguese Product Development in Bengal: A Case Study from the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries • Barbara Karl Selling through Samples? The Role of Objects in Merchant Communication • Gabi Schopf Swiss Silks for New York: Diaries and Pattern Books of the Zurich Silk Industry, 1847–1861 • Alexis Schwarzenbach Marketing avant la lettre: The Swiss Embroidery Industry 1850–1912 • Eric Häusler PART 3 – The Consumption of Textiles: Clothes and Fabrics The Global Cotton Trade on the European Fringe: Imports, Consumption and the Influence of Indian Cottons on Denmark 1660–1806 • Vibe Maria Martens The Duisburger Intelligenz-Zettel as a Source for Textile Research: Supply and Consumption of Silk and Cotton Textiles in Western Prussia in the second Half of the Eighteenth Century • Isa Fleischmann-Heck Textiles and Clothes in the Probate Inventories of Vienna’s Middle Classes, 1783–1823 • Aris Kafantogias The Non-Revolutionary Fabric: The Consumption, Chronology, and Use of Cotton in early modern Bern • John Jordan Notes on Contributors Index of Names Index of Places