Seri­Technics Historical Silk Technologies Edition Open Access Series Editors Ian T. Baldwin, Gerd Graßhoff, Jürgen Renn, Dagmar Schäfer, Robert Schlögl, Bernard F. Schutz Edition Open Access Development Team Lindy Divarci, Samuel Gfrörer, Klaus Thoden, Malte Vogl The Edition Open Access (EOA) platform was founded to bring together publication ini­ tiatives seeking to disseminate the results of scholarly work in a format that combines tra­ ditional publications with the digital medium. It currently hosts the open­access publica­ tions of the “Max Planck Research Library for the History and Development of Knowledge” (MPRL) and “Edition Open Sources” (EOS). EOA is open to host other open access initia­ tives similar in conception and spirit, in accordance with the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the sciences and humanities, which was launched by the Max Planck Society in 2003. By combining the advantages of traditional publications and the digital medium, the platform offers a new way of publishing research and of studying historical topics or current issues in relation to primary materials that are otherwise not easily available. The volumes are available both as printed books and as online open access publications. They are directed at scholars and students of various disciplines, and at a broader public interested in how science shapes our world. Seri­Technics Historical Silk Technologies Dagmar Schäfer, Giorgio Riello, and Luca Molà (eds.) Studies 13 Max Planck Research Library for the History and Development of Knowledge Studies 13 Editorial Team: Gina Partridge­Grzimek with Melanie Glienke and Wiebke Weitzmann Cover Image: © The British Library Board. (Yongle da dian 永樂大典 vol. 18245; Or. 11274). ISBN 978­3­945561­45­4 e­ISBN [PDF] 978­3­945561­46­1 e­ISBN [EPUB] 978­3­945561­47­8 First published 2020 by Max­Planck­Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften Max Planck Research Library for the History and Development of Knowledge: https://www.mprl­series.mpg.de Printed and distributed by epubli / neopubli GmbH, Berlin Published under Creative Commons Attribution­ShareAlike 4.0 International License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by­sa/4.0/ The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d­nb.de. Max Planck Research Library for the History and Development of Knowledge The Max Planck Research Library for the History and Development of Knowledge comprises the sub­ series, Studies, Proceedings, and Textbooks. They present original scientific work submitted under the scholarly responsibility of members of the Scientific Board and their academic peers. The initiative is currently supported by research departments of three Max Planck Institutes: the MPI for the History of Science, the Fritz Haber Institute of the MPG and the MPI for Gravitational Physics (Albert Ein­ stein Institute). The publications of the Studies series are dedicated to key subjects in the history and development of knowledge, bringing together perspectives from different fields and combining source­ based empirical research with theoretically guided approaches. The Proceedings series presents the results of scientific meetings on current issues and supports, at the same time, further cooperation on these issues by offering an electronic platform with further resources and the possibility for comments and interactions. Scientific Board Markus Antonietti, Ian T. Baldwin, Antonio Becchi, Fabio Bevilacqua, William G. Boltz, Jens Braarvik, Horst Bredekamp, Jed Z. Buchwald, Olivier Darrigol, Thomas Duve, Mike Edmunds, Fynn Ole Engler, Robert K. En­ glund, Mordechai Feingold, Rivka Feldhay, Gideon Freudenthal, Paolo Galluzzi, Kostas Gavroglu, Mark Geller, Domenico Giulini, Günther Görz, Gerd Graßhoff, James Hough, Manfred Laubichler, Glenn Most, Klaus Müllen, Pier Daniele Napolitani, Alessandro Nova, Hermann Parzinger, Dan Potts, Sabine Schmidtke, Circe Silva da Silva, Ana Simões, Dieter Stein, Richard Stephenson, Mark Stitt, Noel M. Swerdlow, Liba Taub, Martin Vingron, Scott Walter, Norton Wise, Gerhard Wolf, Rüdiger Wolfrum, Gereon Wolters, Zhang Baichun. Contents List of Contributors ................................................... 3 1 Introduction. Seri­Technics: Historical Silk Technologies Dagmar Schäfer, Giorgio Riello, and Luca Molà ........................... 5 2 The Silk Cycle in China and its Migration Claudio Zanier ......................................................... 13 3 The Silken Tug­of­War in Eighteenth­Century Lyons: The Gendered Nature of Knowledge in the Grande Fabrique Daryl Hafter ........................................................... 33 4 Sericulture and its Complementary: Wild Silk Production in China’s Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Mau Chuan­hui ........................................................ 43 5 The Culture and Economics of Silk Weaving During the Vijayanagar Era (1336–1646) in South India Vijaya Ramaswamy ..................................................... 61 6 Panni tartarici: Fortune, Use, and the Cultural Reception of Oriental Silks in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth­century European Mindset Maria Ludovica Rosati .................................................. 73 List of Contributors Daryl Hafter Professor emeritus Department of History and Philosophy, Eastern Michigan University, Ann Arbor, Michigan Mau Chuan­hui Associate Professor and Director at the Institute of History National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan Luca Molà Professor of Early Modern Europe: History of the Renaissance and the Mediterranean in a World Perspective Department of History and Civilization, European University Institute, Florence, Italy Vijaya Ramaswamy Professor of History Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India Giorgio Riello Professor of Early Modern Global History and Civilization European University Institute, Florence, Italy Maria Ludovica Rosati Independent Researcher PhD in History of Art, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy Dagmar Schäfer Director of Department III, Artifacts, Action, Knowledge Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) Berlin, Germany Claudio Zanier Professor emeritus of History of East and South East Asia Department of History, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy Associated Researcher China National Silk Museum, Zhejiang, China Chapter 1 Introduction. Seri­Technics: Historical Silk Technologies Dagmar Schäfer, Giorgio Riello, and Luca Molà Textile production is, as historian of technology and philosopher Lewis Mumford observed in his 1934 Technics and Civilisation—alongside mining—the sector that historically gen­ erated “the greatest number of improvements.”1 Silk holds a particularly visible place in this history: as a luxury item coveted by elites and rulers since early times, silk inspired “creative minds throughout its history.”2 This fiber and the wide variety of eponymous cloth were for hundreds of years at the center of scholarly discussions on nature, technical innovation, commercial interests, and consumers’ concerns. Observing the worm, the Song­ Chinese politician Shen Gua 沈括 (1031–95), for instance, pondered nature’s transformative powers, while the Italian painter Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) discussed the mechanics of silk throwing machines. Aside from basic spinning and weaving techniques, this sector’s technical changes and innovative power can also be found in more subtle features ranging from the patterning of cloth to the checking of the tensile and dimension qualities of the yarn. The sophistication of products created through supplementary wefts or the produc­ tion of exquisite shimmering effects through the addition of precious metal yarns are often apparent only through complex analyses of historical silk artefacts. This volume presents historical case studies that, sampled from diverse cultural regions, exemplify major technological processes and practices of silk textile production. Based on the growing research on silk’s cultural, social, economic, and intellectual implications, we suggest that it is time to return our view to technology and provide a fresh look at the way in which technical processes have been historically shaped to define the identity of silk. While many insects produce silken thread, and varying technical set­ups can be used to create cloth, historically silk is produced through distinct sets of technological attributes, sociocultural practice and “principles of action.” We suggest calling this technical system that generated ideas about silk a form of textile seri­technics following Francesca Bray’s reinterpretation of Lewis Mumford’s concept. Bray used technics as a heuristic in the study of societies and technical change to unfold how a technical system produced social categories of gender and “hierarchical relations in general.”3 When Lewis Mumford originally introduced the term technics, his aim was mainly to shift the 1930s debate from “machines” and “mechanization” to the “forces and impulses” that generated and used such machinery. Historians of his era had often considered technical nexus to be a given rather than a point of discourse. Mumford argued that economic, social and political events had to be taken into account and that attention had to also be paid to art, skills and dexterity. Mumford’s call took effect slowly. In his seminal study on the Chinese 1 Mumford 1934. 2 Schoeser 2007, 15. 3 Bray 1997, 4. 6 1. Introduction. Seri­Technics: