Page 30 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities

Giulio Ongaro and Edoardo Demo

tury (Demo 2001a, 191; 2001b, 4–5; 2012, 21–7; Bianchi and Demo 2014,
108–11; Panciera 2017, 208–10). Between 1412 and 1494, in the Vicariato of
Schio 38 companies for woollen manufacturing were established, around
one third of the 104 established in the entire province of Vicenza, exclud-
ing the city (Clerici 2004, 176).
From the sixteenth century onward information is more abundant, and
allows for sketching a clearer picture of the evolution of woollen manu-
facturing in Schio and the profile of its protagonists: after the War of the
League of Cambria (1509–1517), that notably affected the Vicentine sec-
ondary sector, the production of woollen clothes recovered its pre-war lev-
els, both in the city and in the countryside, and in Schio in 1528 around
2,000low-qualitygarmentswereproducedyearly(Demo2001a,188,191–3;
2004, 24, 28; 2012, 25–6; Vianello 2004a, 227–31; Panciera 2017, 211–12). It
should be underscored that at least until the mid-sixteenth century the
goods produced were sold both in the Republic of Venice and abroad (De-
mo 2001a, 303). The relevance of the woollen production in Schio is con-
firmed in the following decades: the tax survey of the province of Vicenza
dated 1541 notes that in Schio there were two chiodare da panni,³ six fulling
mills, a purgo, and two dyeing plants, while eight people are defined as ‘fin-
ishers’ of clothes. Finally, it seems that the production of clothes was the
main economic activity for at least ten people (asvi, Estimo, b. 26.). Their
names sound familiar, and we already came across them in table 1.2: Zam-
boni, Baretta, Pellizzari, Rossi, Vanzo, Canneto, and Bologna. According to
Panciera (2004, 239), each fulling mill could serve 15 looms, and this means
that in the area of Schio there should be at least 90 looms in use – with-
out considering the fulling mills in the bordering villages, as the sources
attest at least from the end of the sixteenth century. Besides these struc-
tures clearly linked to the woollen production, the tax survey lists around
30 mill wheels and almost 170 workshops, including the food and hardware
shops, and the apothecaries, in addition to the real manufacturing struc-
tures (shoemakers, tailor’s shops, leather shops, dyeing plants, and so on).
In the second half of the sixteenth century the evolution of the urban
and rural woollen industry changed significantly: from around the 1560s
woollen production slowly declined in the city, experiencing a real collapse
from the 1570s. The spread in the market of Dutch light draperies and the
crisis of the commercial routes to the Middle East because of the loss of

³The chiodare were wooden structures for the tentering of the woollen clothes after the wash-
ing, the scouring, and the fulling (Demo 2001, 98–100).

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