Bookbinders in the Early Modern Venetian Book Trade
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8957620 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Anna Gialdini (0000-0002-1056-5502, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 65 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 901-921 |
| Publication date | 2021-09-27 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Historical Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-246X • E-ISSN: 1469-5103 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0018246x21000728 |
| OpenAlex | W3204785823 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 10 |
Bookbinders are still among the least known of the professions of the early modern Italian book trade, partly because they rarely signed their work. However, they had an undeniably fundamental role in the production and circulation of books (both manuscript and printed) across Italy, and especially in Venice, where the book trade was a particularly lively industry. In recent years, there has been a strong interest in early modern material culture but little attention has been paid to bookbinders, who quite literally shaped the materiality of books. This article looks at the scarcity of documentary sources on Venetian bookbinders between 1450 and 1630 both as a methodological challenge and as evidence of their role in local production and consumption of books. It explores both the lack of sources documenting the professional lives of binders, and sources traditionally underused in book history, to highlight the social lives of binders. Evidence of binders’ family finances, marriages, and social and geographical mobilities is used to identify their lower social standing in the early modern Venetian book world in comparison to booksellers, the overlapping of their professional roles, and the locations of binders’ workshops in the topography of the city
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Consumption (sociology · Early Modern Europe · Early modern period · Economics · Economy · Materiality (auditing · Scarcity · Social science · Sociology · Classics · History · Medieval Literature and History · Renaissance and Early Modern Studies · Renaissance Literature and Culture
Unfinished Business
Economic and Business History as Cultural History
Walking in Sixteenth-Century Venice
Identity signs
A reassessment of the role of guild courts in disputes over apprenticeship contracts
Craft guilds in the pre‐modern economy
Matter in the Material Renaissance
Placing and tracing absence
| Highly cited | No |
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