Introduction

During the early modern period, the clothing and wardrobes of various social groups saw the appearance of a seemingly trivial object: the silk ribbon. Despite its apparent insignificance, this accessory became a significant object of fashion and technological innovation in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and it played an active role in the specialisation of production processes, reconfiguration of labour markets and evolution of brand strategies that are characteristic of early capitalism.¹ The importance placed on ribbons, as John Styles has shown in Chapter 1, also contributed to the emergence of new forms of fashion, as well as of cultural meanings and expressions of gender identity associated with ribbons. Yet the place of ribbons in early modern material culture is virtually forgotten.²

The purpose of this chapter is to address this oversight by portraying the emergence of a culture and fashion based on the consumption of ribbons in early modern Italy. It shows how, from the late Renaissance onwards, trimmings and ribbons became fashionable items of wear because of their physical attractiveness and their ability to represent personal identities, gender differences and sexual meanings. The chapter also demonstrates how, through mediation of mercers and merchants, ribbons encouraged fashionable dress in a wider cross-section of society, helping to stimulate the consumerism and the development of marketing strategies.³

The primary evidence for this chapter comes mainly from Italian sources, but comparisons with information from other areas are also included. The first section will examine the ribbons themselves. It will underline the variety of high-, medium- and low-quality wares intended for different segments of the market. The second section will focus on the uses of ribbons, showing how they became not just fashion accessories but distinctive material objects with specific symbolic meanings. The third section will concentrate on fashion and market evolution, demonstrating how the expanding market for ribbons stimulated demand and made ribbons more broadly available among all social groups. As lightweight items, ribbons were cheap and easy to transport in local and long-distance trade networks. Mercers and merchants disseminated these items through fairs, markets and shops, thereby stimulating demand across the various urban and rural social groups. The fourth section will analyse the marketing strategies developed by mercers and merchants in order to make ribbons more marketable and attractive. The great variety of ribbons available and rising consumption galvanised the diffusion of ‘brands’ and ‘labels’, and inspired processes of imitation (see Chapters 1 and 3).⁴ Commercial strategies were linked to marketing strategies and market competition fostered rivalry between manufacturers in different regions of Europe. The final section touches on the developments in manufacturing technology and work organisation that made the increased production of ribbons possible.

The immense variety of ribbons

At the end of the seventeenth century, Jacques Savary des Brûlons, the French inspector-general of manufactures and author of the Dictionnaire universel de commerce, defined ribbon as

Des Brûlons went on to highlight how the proliferation of different types of ribbons allowed for their widespread use in the clothing of vast numbers of customers – from the finest and most flamboyant silks that ornamented the breeches of royalty to the half-silks employed by less exalted folk for a plethora of more utilitarian purposes, such as binding hems, tying stays, preserving the style of wigs and trimming hats and bonnets (see Figure 1.5). Ribbons were integral to changes in fashion, to the creation of new styles and even new garments.⁶ Their sheer variety merits consideration in more detail.

Although ribbons had been used to a certain degree in Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, their dissemination across a broad spectrum of society in the Italian peninsula dates to the second half of the sixteenth century.⁷ As John Styles shows in Chapter 1 above, this was a period with many innovations, such as knitted hosiery, second-hand silks and novel, light draperies spread across Europe, with these new trends often available at the most affordable prices.⁸ Garment forms changed, too. Already in the first half of the sixteenth century, clothing had become more structured and shapelier, similar in a way to the contemporary evolution in architecture from the organic forms and vertical extension typical of the Gothic style to the simpler, more elegant, geometric proportions of Renaissance classicism. Unlike the traditional long, loose garments, some early modern fashion manufactures were commonly available ready-to-wear, such as in the case of breeches or stockings.⁹ This, along with the use of cheaper and lighter plain fabrics, gave rise to the more general use of accessories in the form of a multitude of different ribbons and trimmings.¹⁰

The variety of ribbons divides into two main categories: patterned trimmings and plain ribbons. In the first group (Figure 2.1, see also 3.5), more expensive trimmings were normally woven from silk or, more rarely, silk mixed with wool, cotton or flax, and they featured the most extravagant patterns and greatest range of colours. The best-quality trimmings were wide decorative bands called ‘galloons’ (guarnitioni or galons). Made in widths ranging from 2 to 5 cm, they were commonly decorated with floral, diamond or chequered patterns and encompassed a kaleidoscope of colours, from red to white and blue to gold. Such galloons were normally a feature of luxury clothing, such as women’s petticoats or velvet gowns of ecclesiastics, nobles and gentlemen. Lesser-quality trimmings included lace trims (dentelles, dentelli) and fleurets (fiocchetti), simple small bows around 1 cm wide that were worn in hair or attached to clothes (see Figures 1.5 and ix.1).¹¹

Figure 2.1 Alessandro Allori, Annunciation (detail), 1603. Pillow with fine gold lace and large bobbins. Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence.

The second group, plain ribbons, was generally simpler and less expensive, but it also varied widely, including a wide variety of strings, cords, fringes and bows. Merchants’ account books and post-mortem inventories from early modern Padua – one of the most important production centres of plain ribbons in Italy – have allowed us to identify the differing compositions of high-, medium- and low-quality ribbons. In general, the highest-quality plain ribbons were made of pure silk, such as cordelle ormesinade.¹² A slightly lower quality of ribbon was made with pure silk wefts and waste silk warps (filosello). The lowest quality ribbons, known as mezzeposte, were made entirely from waste silk or silk mixed with wool or flax. The ‘Refashioning the Renaissance’ database shows that most of these types of ribbons were used by Italian artisans to decorate their garments, including the more expensive types, such as coloured ribbons with gold or lace.¹³

Appreciating the differences in cost and quality is crucial for understanding the significance of ribbons. It highlights the proliferation of an item that might otherwise, mistakenly, be considered marginal. From expensive luxury braids to cheap and cheerful plain ribbons, the price differentiation was up to 80 per cent, allowing a broad spectrum of market segments to be catered for.¹⁴

As some scholars have already noted for other products – especially socks and knitwear – the way that the purchase of silk ribbons was within the means of so many people prompted change not only in fashions but also in the cultural meanings associated with ribbons.¹⁵

The cultural meanings of ribbons

In apparel, trimmings and ribbons had several major uses. First, they were used to fasten clothes together or to attach them to parts of the body, such as sleeves to elbows and breeches to knees. This was common in both women’s and men’s fashions. Second, ribbons were used to finish luxury silk garments. Tailors hemmed sleeves, dresses and breeches with decorative bands and used braid to hide the seams of doublets. Third, plain ribbons decorated common garments and accessories: aprons, collars, skirts and shirts were all ornamented with ribbons as well as embroidery, as were handkerchiefs. Ribbons, too, were applied to items such as shirts, and to simple accessories such as collars. Finally, tailors, mercers and shoemakers employed plain ribbons to add a dash of flair to hats or caps, and to embellish hair accessories or shoes with colourful bows or rosettes.¹⁶

Ribbons were not simply fashionable accessories designed to beautify clothes. They were also objects in their own right, imbued with personal symbolism and cultural significance. As prominent elements of heraldic, military and religious insignia, they operated as formal signifiers of distinction and power.¹⁷ Especially for men, they were conspicuous symbols of honour, valour and social distinction.

Ribbons, moreover, were particularly closely associated with women’s involvement in conspicuous and leisured consumption, with women’s fashions and with perceptions of female vanity. The Bolognese artist Giuseppe Maria Mitelli (1634–1718) seems to have shared this view: in one of the light-hearted scenes he engraved as a component for a gambling game – The Game of Women and Their Business (Gioco delle donne, e sue facende) – a woman is busy buying ‘ribbons from the mercer’ (Figure 2.2).¹⁸ In early modern Venice, for instance, tapes and ribbons were referred to as ‘female merchandise’ (mercanzia femminina).¹⁹ Similarly, when the shop boy Truffaldino, in Carlo Goldoni’s 1741 comedy The Bankruptcy, or, The Failed Merchant (La banca rotta o sia mercante fallito), asks his master, ‘What do you think, we should give as gifts to these women, Signor Pantalone?’, the elderly merchant responds, ‘We should give them some dress offcuts, some furbelows, ribbons, knick-knacks.’ Truffaldino entirely approves: ‘Women would like those exceedingly, sir.’²⁰

Figure 2.2 Giuseppe Maria Mitelli, Gioco delle donne, e sue facende (Game of Wives, and Their Chores), 1654–1718. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Fashion and the markets for ribbons

As fashion accessories or independent objects, ribbons and tapes were essential parts of men’s and women’s clothing from the late Renaissance onwards.²¹ A general overview of continuity and change in this fashion – and ribbons were especially subject to changes in fashion – can be traced for Italy. Already in the mid-sixteenth century, there is widespread evidence of the use of ribbons in various cities. In Naples, for instance, an observer emphasised that ‘the ostentation and gallantries in both clothes and liturgical vestments even extended to coaches in the form of fringes and ornaments’.²² In Venice, a sumptuary law issued in 1600 claimed that ribbons and braids were being used with ‘immoderate profusion’ in all types of garments, by men and women alike.²³ In the seventeenth century, Baroque fashion inspired even greater use of ribbons. In Venice, in the 1660s, the ribbon-makers’ guild (arte dei passamaneri) testified to a reduction in clothing braids during the seventeenth century but an increase in ribbons which were made in a range of colours and also with gold and silver.²⁴

Analysis of the ‘Refashioning the Renaissance’ database helps us see these qualitative cues, confirming the above-mentioned trend. The presence of ribbons increased during the 1550–1650 period. Over the decades there is a shift from thirty-one occurrences of ribbons as accessories on average per decade in 1550–1600 to ninety-three occurrences in the period 1600–1650.²⁵ In artisan homes, they are primarily owned by textile and clothing makers, as well as by artisans active in food, metalworking and retail sectors. A number of ribbons are found also in shops of merchants and tailors.

The growing presence and popularity of ribbons can be explained by many factors. First, ribbons were small, light and easy to display.²⁶ Second, they were luxury objects whose affordability and attractiveness made them popular with poorer social groups. Written descriptions suggest that ribbons were widely adopted for wear on feast days and other special occasions. For instance, a reference from the eighteenth-century Storia documentata di Venezia shows that women from lower social strata had their own holiday, called the garanghelo, when they left the city for the mainland. On this day, they usually wore ‘a scarlet jacket over a cotton skirt, white linen, aprons from Persia and … decorated them with gold, silver, ribbons and tapes’.²⁷ In 1775, in Turin ‘ribbons in current fashion, or for women of the countryside’ (bindelli alla moda, o da paesane) were much used, and the people from the countryside ‘loved their shiny appearance and low price’.²⁸

In addition, the apogee of Baroque court culture, combined with a rise in real wages during the second half of the seventeenth century, may have had a ‘trickle-down effect’.²⁹ The market for silk ribbons, especially the cheapest varieties, seems to have become something resembling a mass market.³⁰ One notable aspect of this was the diffusion of ribbon-selling out from urban settings and into rural fairs and markets. In this process, merchants and mercers played an important role, travelling widely and reaching people deep in the countryside, to whom they sold many types of ‘coloured tapes, ribbons and cheap tobacco’, galloons, lace and combs.³¹ Ribbon manufacturing could easily be adapted to the budgets and tastes of rural customers. In eighteenth-century Turin, the ribbon-makers’ guild asked permission to use fake gold and waste silk in ribbons to sell to country people, who ‘love their shiny appearance and low price’ although ‘their desires are not matched by their means’.³²

Selling ribbons, convincing consumers

During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the key figures selling and marketing ribbons were the mercers. From the mid-seventeenth century onwards, however, mercers no longer relied entirely on ribbons designed and made by other craftspeople, but they also began to manufacture ribbons themselves to their own unique patterns. This tendency explains why mercers’ guilds sought to organise themselves into distinct groups (colonelli) – or requested permission to establish separate new guilds – with the right to make ribbons and braids. In Venice, in 1659, the mercers’ guild asked for the freedom to sell imported ribbons (Figure 2.3) The Senate deemed that the requested privilege would damage the prerogatives of the ribbon-makers’ guild and denied it.³³ In eighteenth-century Turin, however, master ribbon-makers were totally subject to the whim of the fashion merchants (mercanti di moda) who determined ribbon type and quality.³⁴ It was the same in Milan, where local merchants decided the quality of yarn to be used for ribbons.³⁵

Among their sales strategies, aimed particularly at women, was the prominent use of fashion dolls to model their wares. The Venetian poet Franceso Algarotti (1712–64) described how women in his city gathered in droves to see a French doll, piavola de Franza, which had newly arrived from Paris, curiously noting every detail of its dress from its head to its toes. ‘You will see them flocking before you’, writes the poet, ‘scrutinising piece by piece the andrienne, the cap, the ribbons, the vast hoop, and casting their eager looks even to the inside and underneath of each petticoat’.³⁶

Merchants and merchant-manufacturers alike experimented with a range of approaches in order to compete with rivals in attracting consumers and conquering new markets for ‘fashionable’ ribbons. These included the development and promotion of something resembling brand names for their products. Of course, many ribbons were named after the cities where they were made, such as ‘ribbons from Milan’ or ‘from Naples’. But other factors, only partly related to places of origin, contributed to the choice of name and the nature of the brand’s identity. These were manufacturing processes, trading networks and marketing strategies. From the manufacturing perspective, names often depended on the choice of raw materials, on the tools and equipment used (particularly types of loom) and on the technological processes employed, especially in the finishing stages. For instance, ‘Padua ribbon’ (or Padoue in French) normally referred to a ribbon made with waste silk (fleuret, filosello and capitone) – and which was commonplace from the late seventeenth century onwards across Europe, but in France, Switzerland and Sweden in particular.³⁷ In eighteenth-century Venice, ribbons were called ‘Lyons fashion’ (all’uso di Lione) only if specific finishing processes were used.³⁸ Although these techniques originated in Lyon, they had spread to other manufacturing locations, and so ‘Lyons fashion’ ribbons were named after the processes used to create them, rather than necessarily in reference to their place of production.

Figure 2.3 Ribbons could be sold door to door by hawkers. Gaetano Gherardo Zompini, Le arti che vanno per via nella città di Venezia (Venice, 1785), c. 28. Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris).

Such transmission of production techniques and technology was enabled by Europe’s trading networks. The mechanical or engine looms used for weaving silk ribbons in mid-eighteenth-century France were called ‘Zurich looms’ because the artisan who introduced them came from Switzerland.³⁹ The influence of trading networks was visible in the names given to the ribbons themselves. In Paris, ‘Padoue de Lyon’ ribbons were referred to as ‘from Lyons’ not because they were produced in that city but because it was from there that Parisian mercers imported the ribbons woven in the nearby towns of Saint-Etienne and Saint-Chamond.⁴⁰ It was the names of major silk centres and commercial hubs – Lyons or Zurich – that were bestowed on ribbons and the technology that produced them, rather than the towns where silks were actually made – Saint-Etienne and Saint-Chamond, or, in the case of Switzerland, Basel.⁴¹

Another factor influencing ribbon naming and branding was marketing strategy. Merchants tried to appeal to customers by promoting products which conjured up ‘foreign’ fashions. For instance, ribbons ‘from London’ were very popular in Paris, while in London it was ribbons ‘from Paris’ which were the best on the market.⁴² At the same time, merchants monitored the chain of production and organised trade in order to maximise their profits. Eighteenth-century Milanese merchants, for example, exported their finer raw silk to France – importing high-quality patterned ribbons from Lyons in return – and distributed the poorer raw silk to local makers, so that they were able to produce only low-quality ribbons. The consequence was that the merchants made larger profits from the local market, selling foreign ribbons at higher prices while the craftspeople were unable to compete because of the poor silk that was all they could obtain.⁴³

Technology and work organisation

At the same time as merchants and retailers were becoming one of the most significant factors determining the nature of the ribbon industry in Italy, technological developments were beginning to affect the structure and composition of its work organisation across the peninsula, too. Workforce composition and the institutional framework of the guilds were influenced by loom technology in particular. This was the case especially in cities which developed an export-oriented and specialist ribbon-focused manufacture, as distinct from those centres where ribbon production developed within the broader framework of a major silk-weaving industry.

Traditionally, the technology employed in the initial spinning process in ribbon manufacturing was the same as that used for the production of silk yarn more generally. Once twisted, the yarn was ready to be dyed, before being warped on to the loom and then woven into ribbons. Plain ribbons and tapes were normally made with ‘small looms’ (telaretti), which were very simple, easy to use and cheap to buy. Finer ribbons, such as gallons, were made on smaller versions of the looms used to weave silks for clothes. There were two basic types of these: the horizontal loom; and, from the late sixteenth century onwards, the vertical loom, which was used in particular for the very finest ribbons.⁴⁴

Ribbon manufacturing experienced one major technological innovation during the sixteenth and early seventeenth century: the silk-ribbon engine loom, patented in 1605 by inventor Willem Dirckz Sonnevelt and utilized widely in Dutch cities like Leiden, Haarlem and Amsterdam.⁴⁵ A labour-saving innovation, the frame allowed a single worker to weave between six and twenty-four ribbons at the same time. But it was also capital-intensive, and technical limitations meant it was normally restricted to the production of low-quality plain ribbons. Although the engine loom was soon widespread across northern and central Europe, in both urban and rural areas, it did not arrive in Italy until the mid-eighteenth century, where its impact was limited. Its diffusion was restricted by a variety of factors, from the limited availability of raw materials and the size of the market for finished products to the structure of production and the nature of the workforce.⁴⁶

The whole process of ribbon manufacturing was based on the well-known putting-out system, where work was subcontracted to individuals working in their own homes. This operated in both town and country, but there were major differences when it came to the weaving, which depended on the type of ribbons being produced and the looms being used. The ‘small looms’ used for plain ribbons were usually worked by female weavers, with the support of a young (usually) female assistant, and were common in houses, hospitals, orphanages and convents.⁴⁷ The horizontal and vertical looms used for high-quality ribbons were normally the preserve of male weavers, and were commonly installed in their own small room within the weaver’s home.⁴⁸ There he was assisted in weaving by a woman, who generally warped the silk, and a male assistant or journeyman who was responsible for preparing warps of the right length.

In cities such as Milan, Turin, Naples and Venice, the institutional structure of ribbon production was normally guild-based; while in smaller centres, such as Padua and Vigevano – where ribbon-making was highly developed – weavers operated outside the guild system. Where guilds were absent, male artisans produced the more costly patterned braids, while cheap plain ribbons were woven by female master weavers and young female assistants. However, in cities where weavers’ guilds were established, women were normally barred from the workforce outright, with the exception of a few wives, widows and daughters of master weavers. In both contexts, though, the labour market was normally divided between a fixed, permanent workforce (such as owners of silk mills, master weavers and dyers) and a flexible, often itinerant one (such as spinners, workshop assistants and journeyman weavers). And individual weavers were normally reliant on groups of merchants and merchant-manufacturers for the supply of raw materials and the selling of their output (as we have seen in the case of the Turin ribbon-masters); even when weaving in rural areas increased, as occurred around Padua and Vigevano in the second half of the seventeenth century, it remained firmly under the control of urban merchants.⁴⁹

Conclusion

Ribbon consumption in early modern Italy enables us to draw some general conclusions on the introduction, use, popularity and cultural meaning of ribbons as fashion items. The dissemination of ribbons as innovative products provides an intriguing illustration of the way that styles in fashion and patterns of consumption undergo transformation. Still, today, understanding ribbon-wearing requires their complexity to be acknowledged and understood.⁵⁰

This chapter has explored how in early modern Italy ribbons existed in concert with other fashions (especially those for silk products). They were accessories used to decorate clothes, but they also existed independently, as objects with their own cultural significations, drawing meaning especially upon gendered distinctions. While they were conspicuous symbols of honour, valour and social distinction for men, for women they were frivolous consumer products, emblems of vanity, pleasure and play.

The proliferation of ribbons in a plethora of fashionable styles stimulated developments in both manufacturing and distribution during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The use of ‘brand names’ and ‘appellations of origin’ to denote the distinctive styles and qualities of ribbons evolved under the influence of increasingly sophisticated commercial strategies into a major means of marketing products, by catering to demands for the foreign-sounding and the exotic. These same strategies encouraged craftspeople to innovate, copy and disseminate new techniques and methods of production to feed the hunger for new fashions. But they also resulted in attempts to restrict the supply of raw materials and the sale of finished products to inflate profits.

The demand fostered by this culture had a significant bearing on almost every aspect of ribbon production. First, it gave rise to a new industry in the mid-sixteenth century. Ribbon manufacturing had already begun in Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in Rome, Racconigi (near Turin), Florence, Naples and Genoa. But it was in the sixteenth century, as the silk industry grew, that centres specialising in the production of silk ribbons sprang up in the peninsula – notably in Milan, Venice, Padua, Verona and Bologna – and ribbon-makers’ guilds began to appear.⁵¹ These centres maintained their leadership in skills and product quality until the late seventeenth century, when the geography of ribbon production started to alter in accordance with changing patterns of demand and the growth of export markets. Increasingly fierce competition drove capital investment and technological innovation, exemplified by the ‘Dutch’ engine loom. Its dissemination, first into Germany and Switzerland between 1660 and 1710, and only later in the eighteenth century in France and Italy, was accompanied by a shift in the nucleus of ribbon production from southern to central and north-western Europe, where it concentrated in locations including Basel in Switzerland, Krefeld in Germany, Saint-Etienne and Saint-Chamond in France, and Coventry and the Spitalfields district of London in England.⁵²

As ribbon-making burgeoned, it became an increasingly large-scale employer. In addition to the increased numbers of workers, the industry also stimulated the growing concentration of labour, and even the use of forced labour, too. In Padua, Florence and Turin, merchants and merchant-manufacturers financed or brought together production in hospitals, orphanages and charitable institutions, concentrating their labour forces in large numbers in order to make ribbons more efficiently, whether with or without mechanical looms.⁵³ Together with other textile-manufacturing sectors such as lace-making, embroidery, hosiery and silk-throwing, ribbon-making was one of the first ‘proto-manufactures’, with high concentrations of female labour often working in exploitative conditions. In the late eighteenth century, Marsilio Landriani proposed introducing these working practices to Milan so that industries could take advantage of the city’s untapped child-labour resources. Ribbon-making, he suggested, would be an ideal candidate for this because it required neither strength nor skill.⁵⁴

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the dissemination of the ribbon-making industry created a labour market strongly segmented by gender. The weaving of top-quality patterned braids remained under the control of male masters who were organised into traditional guild-based structures. On the other hand, the weaving of plain ribbons – especially in export-oriented centres of production – was traditionally the preserve of female masters, who were assisted by young workers either temporarily over the winter in rural environments, or year-round in urban areas. Where mechanical looms were introduced into plain-ribbon manufacturing, such as in Turin, groups of male workers tried to monopolise production, relegating women to hand-loom weaving.⁵⁵

Innovation in popular fashions underpinned socio-economic changes that were linked to the evolution of early capitalism in Europe. The way in which a small object like the ribbon became established in clothing is a good example of this.