Oriental Luxuries, Parisian Crafts, and the Making of Europe's Fashion Capital

FAIN: FA-51474-05

Sharon Ann Farmer
University of California, Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, CA 93106-0001)

This book examines northern French aristocratic culture through the lens of Parisian production. It argues that tastes for oriental luxuries gave rise, in the age of the crusades, to new Parisian industries. Current discussions of east/west cultural exchanges emphasize interchanges on the borderlands and technological developments in Italy, while ignoring the degree to which Northern France was transformed. However, in a number of areas – rock crystal production, technology of enamels, textile production – Paris was, in the period between 1250 and 1328, as much a center of east/west exchange and technological innovation as were Lucca, Venice and Genoa.

Associated Products

"Aristocratic Power and the 'Natural Landscape': The Garden Park at Hesdin, ca. 1291-1302" (Article)
Title: "Aristocratic Power and the 'Natural Landscape': The Garden Park at Hesdin, ca. 1291-1302"
Author: Sharon Farmer
Abstract: This article argues that the mechanical wonders at the garden park at Hesdin (which may have been inspired by Islamic models) need to be placed within the context of the ways in which human artifice shaped the entire environment of the park, which was designed to accommodate several introduced and managed species of animals.
Year: 2013
Primary URL: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9018048&fileId=S0038713413001863
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Speculum
Publisher: Speculum:, vol. 8, issue 3

"Medieval Paris and the Mediterranean The Evidence from the Silk Industry" (Article)
Title: "Medieval Paris and the Mediterranean The Evidence from the Silk Industry"
Author: Sharon Farmer
Abstract: This article argues that immigrant mercers and silk workers from various parts of the Mediterranean helped to establish a silk weaving industry in Paris in the late thirteenth century.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: http://fhs.dukejournals.org/content/37/3/383.abstract
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: French Historical Studies
Publisher: French Historical Studies vol. 37, no. 3

“La Zisa/Gloriette: Cultural Interaction and the Architecture of Entertainment in Medieval Sicily, France, and Britain" (Article)
Title: “La Zisa/Gloriette: Cultural Interaction and the Architecture of Entertainment in Medieval Sicily, France, and Britain"
Author: Sharon Farmer
Abstract: This article argues that that the Islamic-styled garden pavilion of La Zisa, in Palermo, Sicily, probably had an influence on several late thirteenth- and fourteenth-century centers of leisure in Britain and France, which were known as "gloriettes."
Year: 2013
Primary URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/yjba20?open=164&repitition=0#.V43SvY5KgmU
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of the British Archaeological Association
Publisher: Journal of the British Archaeological Association

The Silk Industries of Medieval Paris (Book)
Title: The Silk Industries of Medieval Paris
Author: Sharon Farmer
Abstract: This book argues that 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. It 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. It also 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.
Year: 2016
Primary URL: http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15563.html
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780812248487
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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