Sergio Tognetti

The development of the Florentine silk industry: a positive response to the crisis of the fourteenth century

The development of the silk industry in Renaissance Florence was a response to the profound economic changes wrought by the demographic crisis of the fourteenth century. The decrease in the available labour supply, the rise in labour costs, changes in demand and consumption, encouraged entrepreneurs in Florence to direct their manufacturing interests towards the production of expensive high-quality goods. The Florentine silk industry was born in the last decades of the fourteenth century, and in the fifteenth century quickly developed into a dynamic industry capable of producing large quantities of luxury fabrics for export to all the principal European markets.