Textile Circulation in the Dutch Global Market: A Digital Approach

From the refined silk used to make japonse rokken coarse cotton of laborers’ shirts, textiles have long been critical indicators rank and status in visual culture early modern Dutch Republic its global networks. And yet, due complexity trade, ways which these generated meaning is not easy discern. With concerns mind, this essay debuts preliminary findings Textile Trade Project (dutchtextiletrade.org), an ongoing, collaborative digital art history project that brings together four types data (textual, material, visual, quantitative) effort advance study historic trade their social meanings.