Page 47 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities

Eonomy and Networks of Rural Elite Families in a Manufacturing Area

on the Retrone river. In 1616 his son Ventura still resided in Schio with his
grandchildren, in the Oltraponte district, in a palace that was valued at 350
ducats (a notable value for a building in Schio), owning lands and cattle
and being one of the wealthiest inhabitants of the village (ascs, b. 22, cc.
54 v.–56 v.).
The silk production, processing, and trade remained in the following
decades a crucial sector in the economy of Schio. Especially from the 1630s
the spinning plants alla Bolognese spread in the province of Vicenza, par-
ticularly in the area of Bassano and Marostica, where all the new licens-
es for the construction of these structures issued between 1670 and 1730
were concentrated. In Vicenza there remained many spinning and throw-
ing plants driven by human energy, but the relevant growth of the sec-
tor between the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the
following one took place in the countryside (Panciera 2014, 144; Vianello
2004a, 56–71). Focusing on Schio, in its Vicariato in 1687 there were 162
fornelli (basins for silk reeling) working, and 123 in 1694 (Vianello 2004a,
80–1). In the 1616 tax survey there was still a samitaro, Cristoforo son of
Giacomo Berlato, indicating the persisting of the silk weaving, even if con-
siderably more limited compared to 1579 (ascs, b. 22, c. 328 v.).
The eighteenth century experienced a strong growth in the production
of raw and semi-finished silk both in the city and in the countryside, with
a recovery of silk weaving. Vicenza remained among the most important
European cities in silk production, with between 500 and 700 looms work-
ing during the century. The situation drastically changed when the French
army entered the city at the end of the century and the silk sector, at least
in the city, collapsed (Panciera 2014, 145–6). In the countryside, silk spin-
ning in the area of Bassano continued its growth in the eighteenth century,
at least, again, until the arrival of the French troops, while sericulture and
silk reeling grew in the rest of the province, with the creation also of cen-
tralized plants where dozens of fornelli worked simultaneously (Panciera
2014,269).Inthe1780stheprovinceofVicenzaproducedaround90tonnes
of raw silk, i.e. 12 per cent of the production of the Republic of Venice and
3 per cent of the European one (Panciera 2014, 268). Obviously, this meant
a relevant growth in the number of fornelli working in the province: from
around 474 in the 1730s, they became 745 in the 1760s, and 921 in the 1780s
(Panciera 2014, 266). A relevant part of the raw silk was then processed in
the spinning plants in the Bassano and Marostica area, on the Brenta river
– there, in 1718, there were 45 spinning plants alla Bolognese, and 49 in 1762
(Panciera 2014, 275, 280). In Schio there still remained the Lodi’s structure

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