Page 36 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities

Giulio Ongaro and Edoardo Demo

tor just to the quantification of the manufacturing structures, especially in
the eighteenth century, when the technological evolution of the plants and
their dimension changed rapidly – unlike the relative stability experienced
by the productivity of the sector in the previous centuries. Therefore, the
data on the production of clothes in Schio takes on even more importance,
emphasizing the growth in the eighteenth century that we described in the
previous lines: the 5,000 mezzetti produced in 1762 became 7,500–7,700 be-
tween the end of the 1760s and the beginning of the following decade, and
10,000–12,000 between 1780 and 1789, reaching 15,000–16,000 units by
the beginning of the 1790s (Panciera 1988, 48). Some years later, in 1817 to
be precise, the establishment of the Rossi Woollen Industry by Francesco
Rossi would confirm the solidity of this productive sector for the long run.
Who were the protagonists of this relevant (and long-lasting) manufac-
turing development? It has been widely demonstrated that only from the
mid-eighteenth century – therefore, during the expansive phase described
above – did a truly ‘woollen’ elite develop in Schio. In this group we include
families that set aside a strong economic and professional diversification
to focus on the woollen industry, then reinvesting the earnings in real es-
tate. At the same time, between the 1740s and the 1780s the various steps
of the weaving process were centralized in Schio in vast structures, sug-
gesting a relevant change toward a more ‘industrial’ characterization of the
sector (Panciera 1985, 405–9; 1988, 35–6; 1997, 484; 2004, 261–5). Moreover,
Panciera underlines that in the eighteenth century a merchant could man-
age, ‘even if in separate places, the weaving and the dyeing, or the weaving
and the finishing of the clothes,’ and that ‘in Schio the clothes producers
owned or rented many fulling mills’ (Panciera 1996, 306; Fontana 1986, fig-
ure 34b and 41). Without questioning the general trend described in the
previous lines, we want to underline that the fragmentation of woollen
production (from the weaving to the washing and scouring, fulling, dye-
ing, raising, up to the finishing of the clothes) in the previous centuries
can be partially debated, at least for the first half of the sixteenth century.
Indeed, as Panciera himself suggests, the dyeing of the clothes had ever
been a separate procedure, given the high level of specialization required,
but already before the eighteenth century there were examples of concen-
tration of the ownership of purghi, fulling mills, and chiodare in the hands
of a single family of merchant-entrepreneurs, suggesting the coordinated
management at least of the working cycle that modified the internal struc-
ture of the clothes before their finishing. For example, in 1541 the Vanzo
family (Giovanni son of Bernardino, Giulio son of Francesco, and Geroni-

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