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1
 Wool in 14th Century
Florence
T H E A F F I R M AT I O N
O F A N I M P O RTA N T
L U X U RY P RO D U C T I O N

Franco Franceschi

The manufacturing of woolen cloths in Florence prob-
ably dated from the Roman age, but there is no proof of
continuity of this activity in the course of the following
centuries. The date of the beginning of medieval pro-
duction, on the other hand, is still subject to discussion:
some have considered the development of an industry
not merely local to be a phenomenon of the second half
of the 13th century; some set it in the first part of that
century, supported by the abundance of labor insured by
the strong immigration coming from the countryside;
and others have even backdated it to the first half of the
12th century, when Florentines had become experts in
dyeing and fulling cloth.
What is certain is that, at the beginning of the 14th
century, the wool industry was already one of the pil-
lars of the Florentine economy, although regarding the
first part of the century, it is difficult to get an idea of
the exact size of the sector. Due to the scarcity of guild
sources (with the exception of regulatory ones), the rarity
of account books or tax censuses, and the silence of pub-
lic legislation, scholars have had to rely on chroniclers’
testimonies, to seek partial answers in documents of a
commercial/customs nature or in the statutes of the Arte
della Lana, the Guild which, with ample autonomy, was
responsible for the tasks of economic and jurisdictional
governance of the sector.

43
1, page 42
Giotto, Annunciation to Saint Anne,
1304-1305, detail with the spinner,
Padua, Scrovegni Chapel
The most well-known and quoted, and sometimes also
debated, estimates are those written in the Nuova Cronica
(New Chronicle) by Giovanni Villani, according to whom,
in 1308 there were about three hundred wool shops in
the city that could produce over one hundred thousand
pieces, or bolts, per year. However, within thirty years, the
number of workshops dwindled to about two hundred
and the annual output was seventy/eighty thousand bolts.
Notwithstanding that in both cases, these are impressive
figures for a single city—a bolt was normally thirteen
1
‘canne’ long, which is more than thirty meters, and we
are talking about over three thousand kilometers of fabric
in one case and between two thousand and two thousand
four hundred in the other!—, the Florentine chronicler’s
figures show an apparent downsizing of the sector that is
not in tune with the many records of the growing suc-
cess of Florentine articles on the markets during the first
half of the 1300s. In reality, the matter is more complex,
because Villani integrated these numbers and observed
that the textiles at the beginning of the century were
2
“coarser and half the value” , that is to say, they were of
a lower quality and worth half of those produced in the
following period. In essence, between 1308 and 1338,
even though production diminished by twenty-five per
cent, its value doubled, a fact that was substantially con-
firmed by scholars.
The most radical criticism of the New Chronicle’s es-
timates, expressed by the greatest expert on Florentine
wool production, Hidetoshi Hoshino, lies in the asser-
44
tion that in all of the following story of this activity, until
the 16th century, no document shows such high levels
of production. For example, as far as the second half of
the 14th century is concerned, the maximum value that
emerged from the sources, and provided for us by the
poet Antonio Pucci, is that of thirty thousand pieces of
cloth in 1373. Later records moreover describe a down-
ward trend: twenty-four thousand bolts in 1378, just un-
der twenty thousand in 1381-1382, an average of about
thirteen thousand in the 1390s. So are we to think that
the figures of Giovanni Villani, an author considered by
the vast majority of historians as accurate and trustworthy,
have no foundation?
Not necessarily. Consider that the gap between 1338
and 1373—thirty-five years—is rather long, especially in
the light of the fact that in these decades the demograph-
ic trend of Florence, such as that of cities and countryside
in half of Europe, was cut down by the plague in 1348
and, to a lesser extent, by the epidemic in 1363. Florence,
which, before the Black Death numbered between ninety
thousand and one hundred twenty thousand inhabitants,
did not exceed sixty thousand in 1373, and this drastic re-
duction of the population inevitably had an effect on the
labor market. In short, if there was an era in which the
wool industry could have reached its quantitative peak,
that could only have been in the first half of the 14th
century, when the availability of labor—a determining
factor for the development of production on a large scale
such as that required for textiles—was at a maximum.
 2
Giotto, The Marriage of Mary
and Joseph, 1303-1304, detail,
Padua, Scrovegni Chapel

We mentioned that the validity of Villani’s statement

on the increase in the value of Florentine cloth in the
first half of the 14th century was well founded. The phe-
nomenon, common to other Italian and European cities
and that reflected an improvement in the quality of fab-
rics and an added determined orientation of producers
towards the creation of luxury items, was rightly linked
to changes in the international markets and above all to
the remarkable increase in transaction and transport costs
between the 13th and 14th centuries: these costs actually
had a lesser impact on the retail price of ‘rich’ fabrics than
they did on cheaper fabrics, thereby making it worth-
while to focus on the former.
2
The development of a higher-quality production was
first of all the result of a change in raw materials. At the
beginning of the century the Florentine workshops used
Italian, Iberian, and North African wool: these kinds of
wool were utilized for various types of products—(‘lazzi’,
‘stametti’, ‘tritane’, ‘taccolini’, ‘saie’, ‘villaneschi’, ‘mezzala-
na’)—of medium-low quality, as reflected in their prices,
similar to those of the cloths made in other Italian man-
ufacturing cities (Milan, Como,Verona) and much lower
than those made in textile centers in Flanders and Bra-
bant, which dominated the European markets of precious
fabrics at the time. For example, in 1306 the great Floren-
tine company of the Alberti family had a stock of pieces
from Brussels priced between 58 and 133 ‘soldi’ (a silver
coin) per ‘canna’, from Douai (60-178 ‘soldi’ per ‘canna’),
Ghent (53-142), and Ypres (55-166), while in the same

45
3
Andrea Pisano, Lanificium
(Wool Workshop), 1334-1336, Florence,
Museo dell’Opera del Duomo

years, the value of Florentine pieces ranged from 10 to

53 ‘soldi’ per ‘canna’. Its radius of diffusion, normally in-
tra-regional and in any case limited to Italy, confirms its
mediocre level.
The breakthrough took place in the 1320s with the
arrival of the best English wool in Florence, namely
from the Welsh Marches (Herefordshire, Shropshire), the
Cotswolds (Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Oxfordshire,
Berkshire), and the Lindsey District (Lincolnshire): raw
materials destined to have no rivals until the 16th century.
Conversion to luxury production coincided with the de-
cline in Franco-Flemish fabric finishing activities carried
out by Calimala merchants (which was affected by the
3 crisis of the Champagne fairs and the relative commercial
networks) and the increase in imports of raw materials
by the major Florentine merchant companies operating
in England. The success of articles made with new kinds
of wool was rapid and encouraging, supported—as we
shall see—by constant technical and qualitative improve-
ment. Not even the epidemic in 1348 interrupted the
trend towards the production of fine fabrics, especially
since the sector was also expanding from a quantitative
point of view: the number of wool shops, relatively small
around 1350 as a result of the destruction of human re-
sources and technical skills caused by plague, progressive-
ly increased, while the average production per workshop
remained stable at around one hundred twenty bolts a
year, with numerous workshops able to make one hun-
dred fifty or two hundred bolts, and some—in the years

46
between 1366 and 1368—even capable of producing
three hundred.
A second key factor in the improvement of Florentine
wool production was the imitation of the models most
popular with wealthy consumers, especially the fabrics
from Flanders and Brabant which were considered the best
available on the European markets.The first record of that
concerned the Rinucci company, which starting in 1323,
sold cloths called “mescolati a la francescha” or “mischiati a
la francescha” (cloths whose color resulted from the mix of
various threads which had each been dyed a separate co-
lour, produced in the Flemish way), a fabric that was much
more expensive than what it had previously produced.The
expression appeared again in the statute of Arte della Lana
promulgated in 1331 (but actually compiled in the years
1326-1327), where there is a reference to a “panno tin-
tillano” (dyed before being spun) “a la francescha”, and
also the precious technical information, “sive cum scar-
3
dassis” . The ‘scardassi’ or combing cards were tools with
4
“minute and twisted teeth of thin iron wire” which were
used for the carding, the aim of which was for spinning
the short wool (‘palmella’) whereas the combing was only
for longer fibers (‘stame’). It could therefore be assumed
that, alongside the fabrication of textiles entirely made of
combed wool, they started to produce cloth in which at
least the weft was made of carded wool; wool that, in order
to be suitable for its new use, had to have the elasticity and
resistance which was typical of good English varieties.
This “carding revolution”5, which starting in the 13th
century took place in many European wool centers, had
a direct influence on another fundamental stage in the
long cloth-making cycle, the dyeing. The carding, which
compacted all tufts of wool and distributed the fibers in
all directions by mixing them tightly, allowed to produce
mélanges of color obtained from blending already dyed
wool: thus mottled yarns and marble effects were ob-
tained, or tones such as ‘monachino’, and ‘bigio’, which
required a rigorous and perfectly homogeneous dosage of
wool of different shades of blue and red, to which white
fiber was possibly added. It is no coincidence that the first
Flemish-Brabant imitation pieces produced in Florence
were called ‘mescolati’, ‘mischiati’ and ‘tintillani’. At first
there were probably a few innovators, although they be-
came increasingly specialized: for example, the company
formed by the brothers Cione and Neri Pitti produced
textiles that were modeled on the best fabrics from Brus-
sels, Douai, and Malines, even thought their market val-
ue remained quite distant from that of the original ones.
After the mid-14th century, the phenomenon assumed
much larger dimensions, as shown by the fact that textiles
“in the way” of “Borsella” and “Doagio” often appear
in the surviving account books and shop inventories of
wool firms.
One aspect that is not always adequately emphasized
is that, unlike what examples from other places show,
in Florence the transfer of technical knowledge and the
creation of new types of fabric were probably unrelated
47
4
4 5
Anonymous Florentine Miniaturist, Anonymous Italian Artist, Tacuinum sanitatis:
The Craft of Wool Makers and Cloth Makers, Vestis lanea (Woolen Cloth), from the Codex
from the Libro di Gabelle, third quarter Vindobonensis Series nova 2644, c. 105r, 1370-
of the 14th century, Florence, Biblioteca 1400, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek
Riccardiana, ms. 2526, fol. 1v

to the movement of specialized workers. In the case of

making imitations of cloth ‘a la francesca’, the knowl-
edge of their basic manufacturing features was seemingly
enough for Florentine woolmakers and skilled workers
to reproduce them, perhaps complemented by a careful
direct examination of the originals.Wool workers arrived
from Flanders and Brabant, in fact, but a few decades lat-
er than the chronology of the improvement of fabrics,
perhaps following the road that textiles had opened up
for them. In fact, it was mainly since the seventies and
eighties of the 14th century, that groups of weavers and
other textile craftsmen from Flanders and Brabant had
been moving to Florence, probably attracted by a man-
ufacture ready to welcome them and characterized by
technical and product affinities with the industry they
had left behind.
Having become successful products in the international
luxury goods market, the fabrics made in Florence began 5

to be imitated. Already in 1348, the commune of Udine

had chosen a Tuscan weaver to begin production there,
based on the Florentine model, of fabrics which were
explicitly associated with the articles made in Flanders
and other important centers in northern Italy. In 1369,
the statute of the Wool Guild in Fabriano, in the Marche
region, mentioned “mixed and large cloth in the way of
Florentine cloth”6. In 1375 we learn also that the Vene-
tians were producing cloth with “Florentine selvage”7. It
is no surprise that records of this nature increased in the
following decades.

49
 In the meantime, the quality and price of fabrics im-
proved even more thanks to the progress made in dyeing.
This operation, which could be carried out on raw wool,
yarn, or cloth already woven on the loom (and possibly
repeatedly to expand the range of chromatic possibilities),
was able to significantly affect the value of a fabric. The
kind of dye was a determinant factor. Let’s not forget that
the choice of dyeing materials used in Florentine wool
production was very extensive and included products of
very different origin and cost: grain, madder, woad, sumac,
weld, alder and walnut bark, brazilwood, orchil, saffron,
lotus, dyers greenweed, turmeric and others. One widely
used dye was undoubtedly woad, derived from glastum or
Isatis tinctoria, a plant intensively cultivated in central Ita-
ly, which produced a very varied range of blue—from a
bold ‘perso’ to a pale ‘allazzato’ shade—also used as a base
for subsequent colorations; while brazilwood and above
all madder, another substance derived from a very com-
mon plant species in Italy (Rubia tinctorum), were used to
obtain different tones of red.
The main innovation recorded regarded precisely this
second range of colors and was due to the spreading
use of grain (‘grana’), a substance that allowed to ob-
tain shades ranging from orange to violet and especially
the prestigious scarlet-red which was another feature of
the finest types of Franco-Flemish fabrics. In Florence,
this precious dye, derived from the body and eggs of the
Kermes vermilio insect—a parasite living in a type of oak
(Quercus coccifera) found in many regions of the Mediter-
50
ranean basin—had been used by the dyers who worked
for the Calimala Guild for a long time, but it was only
slowly starting to be used by the dye-makers of the Arte
della Lana. The first records in this regard—a provision
on payment terms for the purchase of grain—dates back
to 1344, but it was only in 1372 that the Wool Guild
drafted a specific regulation for the marking of “grain
cloth” (“panni di grana”), while five more years went by
before scarlets and “pagonazzi di grana” fabrics appeared
on the list of tariffs concerning the work done by dyers
for the wool manufacturers.
To have an idea of the implication that the introduction
of the new dye had on the value of Florentine produc-
tion, just consider the data on the sale of English woolen
fabrics carried out by the company of Pazzino di Luca
and Piero di Paolo between 1376 and 1381: the pric-
es of ‘grain cloth’ ranged between 160 to 205 ‘soldi’ per
‘canna’, whereas the prices of untreated fabrics (“cloth
without grain”) ranged between 130 and 158; on aver-
age, the former cost thirty percent more than the latter.
These differences, being equal the market value of the
wool with which the cloth was woven, depended on the
concentration of dye used, which naturally affected the
shade obtained. Six dyeing operations carried out by the
Datini company in Florence between 1388 and 1399
clearly documented the relationship between the increase
in the quantity of grain used and the final cost of the
cloth.When it was mainly a matter of fabrics whose basic
color was rather dark, and the amount of ‘grana’ used was
consequently lower, the dyeing would increase the price
of the piece by about 22 percent, whereas in cases where
scarlets of the highest quality were made starting from
white or light blue shades, the percentages of increase in
costs oscillated between 37 and 43 percent.
So, from the third quarter of the 14th century, by tak-
ing advantage of the increasing difficulties of their most
aggressive competitor, the Flemish-Brabant industry, the
wool manufacturers of Florence specialized in the pro-
duction of luxury fabrics and achieved a leading posi-
tion for this lucrative segment of market: in Italy, where
Rome and the kingdom of Naples were indispensable
outlets, and in the Mediterranean, from southern France
and Spain to the Levant. In fact, a substantial portion of
the thirty thousand bolts of cloth a year that left their
workshops in the early seventies consisted of the most
expensive varieties.
This happy conjuncture did not last long. The last part
of the century saw a reversal in the trend of global pro-
duction, which, as shown by the figures quoted in the
opening, diminished by more than half. The reasons for
this change are many and complex: the consequences of
the Ciompi revolution, the uprising in which the unrep-
resented wage laborers and all the other workers in the
Arte della Lana, supported by large sections of the Flo-
rentine lower classes, demanded better living and work-
ing conditions and participation in political power; the
incidence of general factors such as wars, epidemics, and
political instability, which were particularly severe all over
Europe during this period; the growing difficulty in sup-
plying English wool; and the increased competition as a
result of the development of new textile centers in En-
gland, Flanders, Catalonia, and Languedoc.
However, the downsizing of the manufacturing appa-
ratus did not mean a qualitative decline or a loss of con-
fidence in the Florentine products. Throughout the 14th
century and beyond, even when wool manufacturers pre-
ferred new and cheaper textiles, their workshops contin-
ued to produce high-quality items: those ‘San Martino
cloths’—as they had come to be known, named after the
city’s most important wool district—that potently con-
tributed to the creation of the international reputation of
the Florentine wool industry.
1
‘Canna’ (plur. ‘canne’) was a Florentine length unit equal to m 2.334.
2
“erano più grossi della metà valuta”:Villani ed. 1990-1991, III, lib. XII, rub.
XCIV, 199.
3
Quoted by Hoshino 1980, 129.
4
Trattato 1901, 488.
5
Cardon 1999, 184 ff.
6
“Pannos mischiatos et larghos ad modum pannorum florentinorum”: Statu-
ta artis lanae 1880, rub. LXVII, 30.
7
“cimosa alla fiorentina”: Sapori 1955-1967, III, 1967, 203.
51