Innovation and Creativity in Late Medieval and Early Modern European Cities [Hardcover]

Late medieval and early modern cities are often depicted as cradles of artistic creativity and hotbeds of new material culture. Cities in renaissance Italy and in seventeenth and eighteenth-century northwestern Europe are the most obvious cases in point. But, how did this come about? Why did cities rather than rural environments produce new artistic genres, new products and new techniques? How did pre-industrial cities evolve into centres of innovation and creativity? As the most urbanized regions of continental Europe in this period, Italy and the Low Countries provide a rich source of case studies, as the contributors to this volume demonstrate. They set out to examine the relationship between institutional arrangements and regulatory mechanisms such as citizenship and guild rules and innovation and creativity in late medieval and early modern cities. They analyze whether, in what context and why regulation or deregulation influenced innovation and creativity, and what the impact was of long-term changes in the political and economic sphere.

Preface; Innovation and creativity in late medieval and early modern European cities: an introduction, Karel Davids and Bert De Munck; The cities of glass: privileges and innovations in early modern Europe, Corine Maitte; Craft guild legislation and woollen production: the Florentine Arte della Lanain the 15^{th and 16th centuries, Francesco Ammannati; New products and technological innovation in the silk industry of Vicenza in the 15th and 16th centuries, Edoardo Demo; To kill two birds with one stone: keeping immigrants in by granting free burghership in early modern Antwerp, Jan de Meester; The secret perfume: technology and the organization of soap production in northern Italy between the 16th and 18th centuries, Alberto Grandi; Textiles manufacturing, product innovations and transfers of technology in Padua and Venice betló8}