Knitting Guilds of Europe paper review
I am fascinated. I downloaded a paper online titled "The knitting crafts in Europe from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century" and finally sat down to read it. OMG. The majority of the paper focused on the establishment of guilds for hand knitters across Europe and the hypothesized migration of such. The author talked more about the western and northern parts of Europe instead of Italy and Spain (my focus) but it's giving me some side trails to explore. Apparently guilds didn't really come about until the sixteenth century as far as hand knitting is concerned. However, the author states "The guild of knitters in Barcelona, established in 1496, was active." So therefore I should be able to locate information about the hand knitting guilds in Barcelona and hopefully other Spanish cities. Documentation also shows that it was considered more of a "cottage industry" prior to that, before the increase in demand for knit items. There's mention