Title: Gilding the Market: Luxury and Fashion in Fourteenth-Century Italy
Author: STUARD, SUSAN MOSHER
ISBN: 0812239008
Description: Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. 24cm.
cloth, 322pp., 14 color, 10 b&w illus. Contents: Focusing on the luxury
trade in fashionable wear and accessories in Venice, Florence, and other
towns in Italy, Gilding the Market investigates a major shift in patterns
of consumption at the height of medieval prosperity, which, more
remarkably, continued through the subsequent era of plague, return of
plague, and increased warfare. A fine sensitivity to the demands of "le
pompe," that is, the public display of private wealth, infected town life.
The quest for luxuries affected markets by enlarging exchange activity and
encouraging retail trades. As both consumers and tradesmen, local
goldsmiths, long-distance traders, bankers, and money changers played
important roles in creating this new age of fashion.
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