Glazier, Richard: Historic textile fabrics: a short history of the tradition and development of pattern in woven & printed stuffs (London: B. T. Batsford, 1923)

FLORENTINE FABRICS

FLORENCE—VENICE—GENOA

The weaving industry was not new to

Florence, for fine woollen

fabrics had been produced there for fully two

hundred years ; and

for some thirty years before
the sack of Lucca. The
Velluti family, who were per-
haps the inventors of velvet
in Europe, must have been
weaving great quantities of
this material in Florence, as
there are records of large
warehouses and works being
erected in the Via de Velluti.
But with the arrival of
the Lucchese weavers and the
increase of the power and
wealth of the city, there came
a wider appreciation of, and
demand for more sumptuous
fabrics, and the Florentine
weaving industry soon reached
a remarkable degree of artistic

Fig. 32.—Florentine Artichoke.


and technical excellence and

Fig. 33.—Florentine Artichoke.


productive power, so that
towards the end of the
15 th century there were
16,000 persons engaged in
the silk industry, and 30,000
in the woollen trade.
This continued for fully
two hundred years until
1530, when the siege of the
city was undertaken by Pope
Clement VII Land the Prince
of Orange, who approached
the city crying-
“ Prepare, Florence, your
brocades of gold; we are
coming to purchase them
with the measure of our

pikes.”
The Florentine fabrics are singularly distinctive in technique of
weaving, and in design ; while retaining the beautiful symmetrical

59