Interwoven Worlds Mediterranean Textile Culture, 1300-1700 A Selected Bibliography

by Jeff Ball, Associate Professor of Art History, Harford Community College

Introduction:

I would argue that textiles are the best product of material culture that allows us to investigate the full range of human interactions and social connections and conflicts in the Mediterranean areas during the period when its cultures evolved into the modern world we exist in today, roughly about 1300 to 1700 CE. Textiles are necessary and a luxury. They are fundamental parts of state economies and provide opportunities for spectacular booms and busts the business life of individuals and communities. They are used in almost all aspects of life in both secular and sacred realms. Textiles can be beautiful and spectacular art works, both inherent in their design and in their uses and symbolic applications. They are also traditional and timeless in forms that reflect the slow-changing vernacular worlds that the majority of people inhabit. They are a key area for studying the growth in modern technologies and production processes. Textiles are powerful tools for investigating social, gender, and classes issues. Political and authoritative systems can be explored through the way that textiles are used in diplomacy and public display. Given their centrality to trade systems, they are a natural place to look at how people connect and discover the world away from their normality. In short, textiles offer a potent lens for looking at the past, especially in the dynamic and entangled world of the Mediterranean.

This bibliography attempts to gather together many of the key works produced by the scholars who study textiles during this time frame. It is not exhaustive, not the least of which being that it represents works in English only. Also, I have not included any web sources yet, but will update the bibliography in the future to include that material. What this is meant to do is give anyone interested in the topic a starting place for further study. The scholarship included here is taken from a wide range of historians and critics, including art historians, material culture scholars, museum professionals, economic historians, religious scholars, business and market historians, historians of science and technology, and scholars that study fashion and legal issues. The list also is represented by historians of the many cultures of the Mediterranean, from the Iberian Peninsula to the Levant (and beyond). Tags: textiles, silk, wool, velvet, brocade, weaving technology, sericulture, dyes, cochineal red, indigo, luxury goods, material culture, Mediterranean trade, bazaar, gift exchange, robes of state, cloths of gold, caftan/kaftan, Oriental carpets, tapestries, fashion, pseudo-Arabic script, pseudo-Kufic script, Silk Road, Chinese Art, Renaissance Art, Baroque Art, Ottoman Art, Mamluk Art, , Islamic Spain, Nasrid Art, al-Andalusia, Norman Sicily, Persian silk, Livorno, Bursa, Istanbul, Genoa, Lucca, Venice, Florence, Granada, Alexandria, Cairo, Aleppo, Salonica, Sephardic Diaspora, Lorenzo Lotto, Gentile Bellini, Hans Holbein, Süleyman the Magnificent, Roger II, Alhambra, Topkapi Palace, Early Modern, Late Medieval

Anquetil, Jacques, Pascale Gorguet Ballesteros, and Marc Walter. Silk. Paris: Flammarion, 1995.

Aram, Bethany, and Yun Casalilla Bartolomé. Global Goods and the Spanish Empire, 1492-1824: Circulation, Resistance and Diversity. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Atasoy, Nurhan, et al. İpek, The Crescent & the Rose: Imperial Ottoman Silks and Velvets. London: Azimuth Editions Ltd. on behalf of TEB İletişim ve Yaypıncılık, 2001.

Atasoy, Nurhan, and Kınay İrem. Portraits and Caftans of the Ottoman Sultans. New York: Assouline, 2012

Atıl, Esin, and National Gallery of Art (U.S.). The Age of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1987.

Belfanti, Carlo. “The Civilization of Fashion: At the Origins of a Western Social Institution.” Journal of Social History 43 (2010): 261–83.

Behrens-Abouseif, Doris, editor. The Arts of the Mamluks in Egypt and Syria - Evolution and Impact. Göttingen: V & R Unipress, 2012.

Behrens-Abouseif, Doris. Practising Diplomacy in the Mamluk Sultanate: Gifts and Material Culture in the Medieval Islamic World. London England: I.B. Tauris, 2014. Blair, Sheila. Islamic Calligraphy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006.

Bogansky, Amy Elizabeth. Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500-1800. Edited by Amelia Peck. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013.

Braude, Benjamin. “International Competition and Domestic Cloth in the Ottoman Empire, 1500-1650: A Study in Undevelopment.” Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 2 (1979): 437–51.

Brotton, Jerry. The Renaissance Bazaar: From the Silk Road to Michelangelo. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Brown, David Alan, et al. Lorenzo Lotto: Rediscovered Master of the Renaissance. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1997.

Bulut, Mehmet. “The Ottoman Approach to the Western Europeans in the Levant during the Early Modern Period.” Middle Eastern Studies 44 (2008): 259–74.

Bush, Olga. Reframing the Alhambra. Architecture, Poetry, Textiles and Court Ceremonial. Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018.

Campbell, Thomas P, and Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.). Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2002.

Campbell, Thomas P, et al. Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007.

Campbell, Thomas P, and Elizabeth A. H Cleland. Tapestry in the Baroque: New Aspects of Production and Patronage. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Symposia. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2010.

Carboni, Stefano, Institut du monde arabe (France), and Metropolitan Museum of Art. Venice and the Islamic World, 828-1797. English ed. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007.

Çịzakça Murat. “A Short History of the Bursa Silk Industry (1500-1900).” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 23 (1980): 142–52. Contadini, Anna, and Claire Norton. The Renaissance and the Ottoman World. Farnham, Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2013.

Curatola, Giovanni. “A Sixteenth-Century Quarrel About Carpets.” Muqarnas Online 21 (2004): 129–37.

Curatola, Giovanni. Turkish Art and Architecture: From the Seljuks to the Ottomans. New York: Abbeville Press, 2010.

Dauverd Céline. Imperial Ambition in the Early Modern Mediterranean: Genoese Merchants and the Spanish Crown. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Davids, C. A, and Bert De Munck, eds. Innovation and Creativity in Late Medieval and Early Modern European Cities. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2014.

Dodds, Jerrilynn Denise, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife (Granada, Spain). Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992.

Dolezalek, Isabelle. Arabic Script on Christian Kings: Textile Inscriptions on Royal Garments from Norman Sicily. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2017.

Duits, Rembrandt. “Figured Riches: The Value of Gold Brocades in Fifteenth- Century Florentine Painting.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 62 (1999): 60–92.

Duits, Rembrandt. Gold Brocade and Renaissance Painting: A Study in Material Culture. London: Pindar Press, 2018.

Ertuğ Ahmet, Patricia L Baker, Tezcan Hülya, and Jennifer Mary Wearden. Silks for the Sultans: Ottoman Imperial Garments from Topkapı Palace. Turkey: Ertuğ & Kocabiyik, 1996.

Ertuğ, Zeynep Tarim. “The Depiction of Ceremonies in Ottoman Miniatures: Historical Record or a Matter of Protocol?” Muqarnas 27 (2010): 251–75.

Faroqhi, Suraiya, and Christoph K Neumann. Ottoman Costumes: From Textile to Identity. İstanbul: Eren, 2004. Faroqhi, Suraiya. Travel and Artisans in the Ottoman Empire: Employment and Mobility in the Early Modern Era. Library of Ottoman Studies, 44. London: I.B. Tauris, 2014.

Faroqhi, Suraiya. A Cultural History of the Ottomans: The Imperial Elite and Its Artefacts. London: I.B. Tauris & Co., 2016.

Fetvaci, Emine. “From Print to Trace: An Ottoman Imperial Portrait and Its Western European Models.” The Art Bulletin 95 (2013): 243–68.

Fleet, Kate. European and Islamic Trade in the Early Ottoman State: The Merchants of Genoa and Turkey. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Gordon, Stewart. Robes and Honor: the Medieval World of Investiture. New York: Palgrave, 2001.

Grabar, Oleg. Islamic Visual Culture, 1100-1800: Constructing the Study of Islamic Art. Aldershot, Hampshire, England: Ashgate, 2006.

Golombek, Lisa. “The Draped Universe of Islam.” Late Antique and Medieval Art of the Mediterranean World. Edited by Eva R. Hoffman, 2007: 97-114.

Greene, Molly. "Beyond the Northern Invasion: The Mediterranean in the Seventeenth Century." Past & Present, no. 174 (2002): 42-71.

Grube, Ernst J. “Two Hispano-Islamic Silks.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 19 (1960): 77–86.

Hills, Paul. Venetian Colour: Marble, Mosaic, Painting and Glass, 1250-1550. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999.

Hollberg, Cecilie, and Galleria dell'Accademia (Florence, Italy). Textiles and Wealth in 14th Century Florence: Wool, Silk, Painting. Firenze: Giunti, 2017.

Holod, Renata, et al. Envisioning Islamic Art and Architecture: Essays in Honor of Renata Holod. Edited by David J Roxburgh. Arts and Archaeology of the Islamic World, Volume 2. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Howard, Deborah. “Death in Damascus: Venetians in Syria in the Mid-Fifteenth Century.” Muqarnas Online 20 (2003): 143–57.

Israel, Jonathan I. European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism, 1550-1750. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985.

Jardine, Lisa, and Jerry Brotton. Global Interests: Renaissance Art Between East and West. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2000.

Jenkins, D. T. The Cambridge History of Western Textiles. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Juhasz, Esther, Miriam Russo-Katz, Muzeʼon Yiśraʼel (Jerusalem), and Jewish Museum (New York, N.Y.). Sephardi Jews in the Ottoman Empire: Aspects of Material Culture. Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1990.

Karababa E. “Investigating Early Modern Ottoman Consumer Culture in the Light of Bursa Probate Inventories.” The Economic History Review 65 (2012): 194–219.

Komaroff, Linda. Islamic Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Historical Context. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012.

Komaroff, Linda, Sheila Blair, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Gifts of the Sultan: The Arts of Giving at the Islamic Courts. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2011.

Lambert, Bart, and Katherine Anne Wilson, eds. Europe's Rich Fabric: The Consumption, Commercialisation, and Production of Luxury Textiles in Italy, the Low Countries and Neighbouring Territories (Fourteenth-Sixteenth Centuries). Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2016.

Lanaro, Paola, and Victoria University (Toronto, Ont.). Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies. At the Centre of the Old World : Trade and Manufacturing in Venice and the Venetian Mainland, 1400-1800. Essays and Studies, 9. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2006.

Lemire, Beverly, and Giorgio Riello. “East & West: Textiles and Fashion in Early Modern Europe.” Journal of Social History 41 (2008): 887–916. Mack, Rosamond E. Bazaar to Piazza: Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300-1600. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

Mackie, Louise W, and Cleveland Museum of Art. Symbols of Power: Luxury Textiles from Islamic Lands, 7th-21st Century. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2015.

Mackie, Louise W. “Toward an Understanding of Mamluk Silks: National and International Considerations.” Muqarnas 2 (1984): 127–46.

Mackie, Louise W. “Woven Status: Mamluk Silks and Carpets.” The Muslim World 73 (1983): 253–61.

Masters, Bruce Alan. Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World: The Roots of Sectarianism. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Masters, Bruce Alan. The Origins of Western Economic Dominance in the Middle East: Mercantilism and the Islamic Economy in Aleppo, 1600-1750. New York: New York University Press, 2008.

Mazower, Mark. Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims, and Jews, 1430-1950. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.

McCall, Timothy. "Brilliant Bodies: Material Culture and the Adornment of Men in North Italy’s Quattrocento Courts." I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 16 (2013): 445-90.

McCall, Timothy. “Materials for Renaissance Fashion.” Renaissance Quarterly 70 (2017) 1449–64.

Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.), and Maryam Ekhtiar. Masterpieces from the Department of Islamic Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011.

Molà, Luca. 2000. The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.

Monnas, Lisa. Merchants, Princes and Painters: Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern Paintings, 1300-1550. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2008. Monnas, Lisa, and Victoria and Albert Museum. Renaissance Velvets. London: V&A Publishing, 2012.

Muhanna, Elias I. “The Sultan’s New Clothes: Ottoman–Mamluk Gift Exchange in the Fifteenth Century.” Muqarnas Online 27 (2011): 189–207.

Muthesius, Anna. Studies in Silk in Byzantium. London: Pindar Press, 2004.

Muthesius, Anna. Studies in Byzantine, Islamic, and Near Eastern Silk Weaving. London: Pindar Press, 2008.

Necipoǧlu Gülru. “Süleyman The Magnificent and the Representation of Power in the Context of Ottoman-Hapsburg-Papal Rivalry.” The Art Bulletin 71 (1989): 401–27.

Okumura, Sumiyo and Halit Eren. The Influence of Turkic Culture on Mamluk Carpets. Islamic Art Series, No. 11. Istanbul: IRCICA, Organisation of Islamic Conference, Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture, 2007.

O'Malley M. “A Pair of Little Gilded Shoes: Commission, Cost, and Meaning in Renaissance Footwear.” Renaissance Quarterly 63 (2010): 45–83.

Payne, Alina Alexandra, editor. Dalmatia and the Mediterranean: Portable Archaeology and the Poetics of Influence. Mediterranean Art Histories, Volume 1. Leiden: Brill, 2014.

Phillips, Amanda. “The Historiography of Ottoman Velvets, 2011-1572: Scholars, Craftsmen, Consumers.” Journal of Art Historiography 6 (2012).

Pinet, Simone, and Cynthia Robinson. Courting the Alhambra: Cross-Disciplinary Approaches to the Hall of Justice Ceilings. Leiden: Brill, 2008.

Pinner, Robert, Walter B Denny, and International Conference on Oriental Carpets. Carpets of the Mediterranean Countries 1400-1600. Oriental Carpet and Textile Studies, 2. London: Hali magazine, 1986

Piotrovskiĭ M. B, Anton D Pritula, and National Museums of Scotland. Beyond the Palace Walls: Islamic Art from the State Hermitage Museum: Islamic Art in a World Context. Edinburgh: National Museums of Scotland, 2006. Quataert, Donald. Consumption Studies and the History of the Ottoman Empire, 1550-192: An Introduction. SUNY Series in the Social and Economic History of the Middle East. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000.

Ravid, Benjamin. “A Tale of Three Cities and their Raison d'Etat: Ancona, Venice, Livorno, and the Competition for Jewish Merchants in the Sixteenth Century.” Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Mediterranean World After 1492. Alisa Meyuhas Ginio, ed. London England: Cass, 1992.

Robinson, Cynthia, and Leyla Rouhi. Under the Influence: Questioning the Comparative in Medieval Castile. The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World, V. 22. Leiden: Brill, 2004.

Rogers, J. M, and R. M Ward. Süleyman The Magnificent. Secaucus, N.J.: Wellfleet Press, 1988.

J. Michael Rogers. “’The Gorgeous East’: Trade and Tribute in the Islamic Empires,” 69-76, in Circa 1942, edited by Jay Levenson. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1991.

Rogers, Mary. “An Ideal Wife at the Villa Maser: Veronese, the Barbaros, and Renaissance Theorists of Marriage.” Renaissance Studies 7 (1993): 379–97.

Rosser-Owen, Mariam. Islamic Arts from Spain. London: V&A Publishing, 2010.

Saurma-Jeltsch, Lieselotte E, and Anja Eisenbeiss. 2010. The Power of Things and the Flow of Cultural Transformations: Art and Culture Between Europe and Asia. Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2010.

Simon-Cahn, Annabelle. “The Fermo Chasuble of St. Thomas Becket and Hispano- Mauresque Cosmological Silks: Some Speculations on the Adaptive Reuse of Textiles.” Muqarnas Online 10 (1992): 1–5.

Spallanzani, Marco. Oriental Rugs in Renaissance Florence. Textile Studies, 1. Firenze: S.P.E.S., 2007.

Stierlin, Henri, and Anne Stierlin. Splendours of an Islamic World: Mamluk Art in Cairo 1250-1517. London: Tauris Parke, 1997. Thomas, Joe A. “Fabric and Dress in Bronzino's Portrait of Eleanor of Toledo and Son Giovanni.” Zeitschrift Für Kunstgeschichte 57 (1994): 262–67.

Tognetti, Sergio. “The Development of the Florentine Silk Industry: A Positive Response to the Crisis of the Fourteenth Century.” Journal of Medieval History 31 (2005): 55– 69.

Tognetti, Sergio. “The Diaspora of Inhabitants from Lucca in the 14th Century and the First Developments of the Silk Industry in Florence.” Reti Medievali Rivista 15 (2014): 41–91.

Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi, Regina Krahl, Nurdan Erbahar, and John Ayers. Chinese Ceramics in the Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul: A Complete Catalogue. London: Published in association with the Directorate of the Topkapi Saray Museum by Sotheby's Publications, 1986.

Tracy, James. “Syria's Arab Traders As Seen by Andrea Berengo, 1555-1556.” Oriens 37 (2009): 163–76.

Trivellato, Francesca. The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.

Trivellato, Francesca. “Renaissance Italy and the Muslim Mediterranean in Recent Historical Work.” The Journal of Modern History 82 (2010): 127–55.

Varlik, Nükhet. “Plague, Conflict, and Negotiation: The Jewish Broadcloth Weavers of Salonica and the Ottoman Central Administration in the Late Sixteenth Century.” Jewish History 28 (2014): 261–88.

Yaman, Bahattin. “Fit for the Court: Ottoman Royal Costumes and Their Tailors, from the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century.” Ars Orientalis 42 (2012): 89–101. Citation:

Ball, Jeff. (2018, June-July). Interwoven Worlds – Mediterranean Textile Culture, 1300-1700: A Selected Bibliography. 2018 NEH Summer Institute for Higher Education Instructors, "Thresholds of Change: Modernity and Transformation in the Mediterranean, 1400-1700," Hill Museum and Manuscript Library at Saint John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota. Kiril Petkov, Director.

Credits:

This project was completed with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanites and the sponsorship of the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library during the 2018 NEH Summer Institute "Thresholds of Change: Modernity and Transformation in the Mediterranean, 1400-1700," June 18-July 2018, Collegeville, MN.